#they will try to retcon but since i am not watching season 2 i will simply take this out of context

[worstloki]

Loki in season 2 saying that he did New York because he was soooo angry with his father and brother that he let his emotions get the better of him.......

#BOI #he didn't even recount what happened properly this is ridiculous #they will try to retcon but since i am not watching season 2 i will simply take this out of context #and decide this is how loki explains the events #loki explaining away the sudden development of violent tendencies between Thor 1 Avengers 1 and Thor 2: i was feeling emotional #Thor: you looked really bad are you sure it had nothing to do with some form of coercion or space cult--? #Loki: a guy can't even hold a planet hostage in this day and age without being questioned smh #Thor: wha--I'm just concerned #Loki: and i was having a bad week #Thor: doesn't sound right #Loki: are you trying to make me angry after you saw what happened the last time?? #the Loki show

[mystycalypso]

OKAY LETS TRY THIS AGAIN

Welcome To Ravenbrooks season 2 Theories before it comes out

Disclaimer uh- these are the ramblings of a mad man named Jack (me). Mainly so when it does eventually come out I can see what if anything I got right. Now lets get into it below the fold.

1. It's revealed that Jay Roth (Nicky's dad) is the one who died in Trinity's old house

We know in both the book and games and even the pilot, Nicky was the one living across from Mr. Peterson, but now it's Trinity's home. I think the grief of what happened in that house is why they moved

2. We'll get to see the rest of the Rescue Squad's parents

Pretty self-explanatory. I don't know what story purpose they'd serve exactly, aside from maybe how they react to their kids' shenanigans but it'd be really cool to see them. Especially Luanne Roth who I am currently head canoning to be neglectful in some manner (not necessarily on purpose) because of the lines about Nicky running away all the time and no one noticing he went missing.

3. We see a cultist in uniform

I think it'd be really interesting if specifically Trinity finds them mid ceremony or if bad things start happening to her family and she gets suspicious

4. The kids learn Mr. Peterson isn't "evil"

We know in the books that Theo is looking heavily into the cult, and he seems to be doing the same here. I think in Trinity's realization's she'll learn his real motivations for keeping them away, maybe even his side of the stories from episode 3

5. We learn what Trinity did

We have hints at what happened, obviously, but with the teaser image reusing the old photo of kid Trinity, l think we're going to learn what exactly happened and why it was so bad that they had to move towns

6. More nightmare sequences

From the hello neighbor franchise in general, we've learned that both Trinity and Nicky are prone to nightmares, and with the trauma they've gained from episode 6, I assume we'll get to see plenty other creepy cool nightmare scenes. (Seriously, just the maggots from episode 2 make me squirm physically when I see it. Every time)

7. Principle Abanante isn't dead

This might be clear to some, and yeah, it's far from the greatest stretch on this list but I think we'll see her again and maybe that she caused the school explosion

8. Delroy(and possibly Scout)'s investigations

I'm very curious about what Delroy was doing in the tunnels under the school, maybe doing his own investigations on the cult? Scout included to round out the Hello Neighbor hide and seek crew. Likely having to join forced with the current members of the rescue squad to stop a stronger force.

9. We see Theodore's brother in his "new form"

Not 100% sure if he became the Guest or the Thing, and I've seen good theories/evidence for both, but either way I think we'll get to see him with the knowledge that it's him.

10. We learn why Ivan acted the way he did in s1

He was more scared of just the mention of Peterson than anyone, and it's been bugging me since my first watch. I'd like to see if there's reason to his behavior or just general paranoia. Leaning towards the former, knowing this series.

11. Love triangle between Trinity, Nicky and Enzo

I'd really rather this doesn't happen. I hate love triangles so much. They're so dumb and useless and bad. But like I told kaydin during our third watch, I can feel it happening. It's breathing down my neck with the loud annoying sound of needless romantic tension.

12. The whole squad sits together at lunch

They escaped the basement together! The least they could do as friends is actually eat lunch together instead of Nicky and Trinity sitting seperate from everyone else

13. Nicky and Aaron's relationship is revealed

I'm really, REALLY hopeful that their friendship isn't retconned in the series. It was great motivation for Nicky to be investigating Mr. Peterson, and is also just generally sweet.

14. We see Aaron

Nicky was the basement for a couple of weeks. However, Aaron was in there for months! I'm eager to see how he is both mentally and physically. I feel like he's either gonna be much, much worse than Nicky or somehow way better.

15. Quentin becomes my favorite character

This is mostly on here as a joke. I'm not gonna lie, I know he'll be at least a favorite because he's my favorite Hello Neighbor game character. Like- the squeal I squealed when I saw his van and silly Hawaiian shirt was immense. I love him so much, and I hope he gets good screen time.

16. Nicky loses his bag

This is more just a- gut feeling? He's gained it as a sort of comfort item, it seems, and I feel like with the nature and badluck of Ravenbrooks, he's going to lose it. Bonus points if he has to choose between it or a member of the Rescue Squad

17. Mr. martaugh dies

Again, I have- no evidence for this. Yeah, he's in the teasers a lot, but like that doesn't imply he dies. Maybe I just really hope he dies because he's creepy /j, but yeah, uh- if it happens, I'll probably still be in shock even though it's on this list.

18. We see an on screen kiss

Tricky fans cross your fingers and pray, I know I will be. It'll probably just be a quick peck on the cheek, but I can just kind of feel it in my bones. Similar to the love triangle one.

And there you go! My predictions for Season 2!

As soon as it drops, you will probably see my reaction to it and a return to this list to see how close or far I was on these. (Spoiler tagged, of course) But until then, I will be patiently waiting, drawing, and rewatching the show too many times over (wonder if I can hit 50 watches before season 2 drops)

Cya!

- Jack

#welcome to raven brooks #hello neighbor welcome to raven brooks #hello neighbor nicky #trinity hello neighbor #tricky #trinity bales hello neighbor #enzo esposito #enzo hello neighbor #hello neighbor theories #aaron hello neighbor #hello neighbor aaron #aaron peterson #theodore peterson #mr peterson #maritza esposito hello neighbor #maritza hello neighbor #quentin hello neighbor #predictions #hnas

[lightwise]

Ahsoka Show Episode 2 - Spoilers/Thoughts

Okay, now for episode 2 thoughts. (I've posted my reaction to *that* moment at the end of episode 1, and it's resulting consequences in this episode, in another post).

SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT! DO NOT SCROLL IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE EPISODE YET! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Okay, I ranted about my dislike for Sabine's injury here. Moving on.

Literal chaos child. Sabine is the natural successor of the disaster lineage force sensitivity or not lolol. "I uh, I unlocked the map. And then lost it. And then lost all my backups. But everything's fine I swear!" Anakin would be proud.

I gotta say it, Baylon's ship makes me think of the Marauder just a bit.

I am loving these nightsister temples. So cool. Very Celtic/stone circle/mapping the planets and stars vibes.

Ahsoka trying to trace the fight between Shin and Sabine almost felt like she had some Psychometry skills ala Quinlan Voss going on??

AHSOKA PET THE DANG LOTHCAT. YOU MUST PAY TRIBUTE BEFORE ENTERING THE ABODE.

Love that she's so calm feeling that droid coming down behind her before taking it out.

Huyang vs Hera as Sabine almost blows them all to pieces...gotta love it. I need to see Tech and Huyang hanging out together. They would either be besties or drive each other insane.

I really love the practical effects of all the droid and machine builds in this show. It feels even more detailed and realistic than props in Mando.

Hera just still doesn't quite feel like Hera to me :/ And it's not MEW's fault at all. It feels like costuming and dialogue choices. Love her talk with Sabine though. I'm fascinated to know what viewers who have never seen Rebels are thinking of these scenes, bc they have no idea the backstory behind these two and the mother/daughter, older sister/younger sister nature of their relationship.

The CGI here is absolutely gorgeous when Morgan opens the star map. I also love how it is much more extensive and detailed than what Sabine was able to get. And the hint of green nightsister magic!

It will be really interesting to see if she's referring to the Chiss homeworld, the Yuuzhan Vong, or something else by "other galaxy".

I really want to see more of Baylon and Shin's history. She is attached to his every word and obeys his commands very seriously. How did he come to take her on as his padawan? When did he find her? What made him abandon the Jedi order (did he have doubts before the Clone Wars? Or just found a way to survive after?) So many questionssss.

Ahsoka and Hera, on the detective trail. Love it. When this series was announced, long before it was apparent that it would be Rebels season 5, I had hoped it would be Ahsoka hopping around the galaxy solving mysteries. This is fun to see.

Guys. I am trying SO HARD to not fall down the "imperial remnants and new republic politics as the galaxy tries to rebuild" rabbit hole that my brain eagerly wants to fall down whenever they start bringing up these dynamics. I was almost losing my mind during the Dr. Pershing episode in Mando season 3, and this is whetting my appetite again. Idk if I will someday need to write fanfiction about this or copious amounts of tumblr posts, but you have been warned. Star Wars and politics and the navigation of the collapse of empire and the redistribution of status and wealth and goods and the devious ways that can all quickly start to fall apart...okay I'll stop myself. When we get to the Mon Mothma episode...heaven help me.

Again, the subtle facial expressions in this show are so good. Not all of the dialogue is escaping cheesiness, but the facial expressions are conveying a wealth of emotions that is backing and grounding each line of dialogue.

This scene. THIS SCENE. Okay, I promised I would talk about Sabine's Jedi training and supposed Force sensitivity that we all have been wondering about since the trailers. I was not thrilled about the idea of Sabine being retconned to be force-sensitive. There's no hint of it in Rebels, and it would feel like a shocking contrast to her lineage as a Mandalorian if it wasn't handled properly. That said, I went into it with a relatively open mind, and have not been overly bothered (more just confused and wanting the backstory) on her and Ahsoka all of a sudden having this master/apprentice relationship that has taken place off screen and that obviously did not go well. Sabine has trained with lightsabers before (the Darksaber and Ezra's lightsaber), and it did make sense to me that she could want to know how to use it more effectively and want to be closer to the practices of what made Ezra who he is in his absence. Why Ahsoka would have agreed to train her...that I am unclear on. I wonder if her failure in that also contributed to her telling Din that she couldn't train Grogu. Anyway, all of this has been a "what the heck are you up to Dave," but I haven't hated it.

All that said, I didn't really want Sabine to be Force sensitive bc I also hate when Star Wars, or Star Wars fans, try to make everyone have latent force abilities in ways that feel like a cop out, like it's the only explanation for a character being cool, or having value, or tying into the plot (I am not trying to call out anyone in particular here, just the concept). Star Wars is not only about Jedi, and while it is almost always about the Force, that doesn't always happen in the highly specialized, exclusive ways we see from force users like the Jedi and the Sith. So, I was hoping, let's see Sabine trying to tap into the fact that the Force is inside everyone, but not everyone can access it to the same capability. Let's see her trying to gain certain skills and practice a way of existing in the world that goes beyond some fancy lightsaber moves and meditation rituals. Let's see a Mandalorian who already has a distinct and powerful way of fighting and philosophy in the world, attempt to mold it with another, almost opposite, approach. And I think that's what we are getting! (maybe this should have been it's own post, oops).

Huyang's no nonsense talk to Sabine is exactly what she needs to hear. For all his sass and directness, he doesn't lack compassion in how he chooses his words with her. And yet he also isn't afraid to eviscerate her (lack of) Force abilities with the most Jedi worthy burn I've ever heard "your skills would fall short of them all." He's been around for 2500 years. I don't think Sabine is force sensitive ya'll. At least not in a conventional way. And yet, Huyang, who has been the keeper of lightsabers and Jedi youngling training for generations, is not at all discouraging her from applying herself to try. His tone is exceedingly gentle with the words "the only time you are wasting, is your own." Is it possible to marry a droid? Pretty sure he's husband material lol.

Also his hands look like medieval gauntlets. So cool. They outdid themselves on the practical effects here.

Star Wars has Solid State Drives?? (Sorry the SSD reference was kind of funny).

Alright, Ahsoka against a droid and a former Inquisitor. Easy peasy.

Hera and Chopper (who looks FANTASTIC btw, there is no distinction between Choppper animation and Chopper live action LOL), in the Phantom and their dialogue back and forth was perfection.

That lil force push and lil backflip midair and lil shoulder turn to miss the lightsaber from behind 👀 please more force usage from Ahsoka! In her own show!

Very interested to learn more about Marrok too. Their stunt actor is really good.

Girlie is pulling out the Mando armor. We're getting serious now.

"It's not loyalty. It's greed."

I liked Sabine's part in this recreation of the end of Rebels, but I didn't really love the retcon on Ahsoka's. Where is her staff? Why is her cloak a different color? Where is Morai? It just fell kind of flat for me. Like the live action hasn't earned the emotional gravitas and hope that this scene held in Rebels. Again Dave, really fascinated to see where you're going with all this.

Finally, Ahsoka's ship is cool. I would travel around the galaxy with her for sure. And, the unique way that holograms show up on Morgan's ship is very, very cool. Can't wait to see what next week holds!

#ahsoka #ahsoka series spoilers #ahsoka spoilers #ahsoka show spoilers #ashoka spoilers #ahsoka tano #sabine wren #hera syndulla #huyang #baylon skoll #shin hati #morgan elsbeth #some light ramblings #somelightramblings

[willel]

We don’t know the plot of the play or if it’s relevant to S5 but saying that connecting some current events to the past (and more specifically to the adults’) would be a complete retconning is a bit unfair. I remember watching S1 for the first time and wondering what happened between Joyce and Hopper, between Lonnie and Hopper, why has Joyce such a bad reputation in Hawkins but also such strong intuition, what happened to her aunt, why did Hopper feel cursed, and since it looked like Will was targeted, were all these things connected? I’m sure they didn’t have all the details mapped out back then but maybe a general idea (ala Freddy Krueger possibly). Maybe it’s bc I was less focused on the kids than others that I noticed these things.

I didn't say it was all retconning. I said specifically Joyce knowing Bob in high school would be a retcon when it's explicitly stated she did not know him.

With the play being canon and all, going back on that would indeed be a retcon. Not the worst one ever but it does mess with me a little when even smaller details like that get rerewitten later.

Like, Bob had a whole thing about Joyce being the it girl and he was a nobody in high school and was bullied, but now he's a well adjusted dude in the future dating Joyce Byers and he's content. Ya'know? I guess it still works even if they knew each other but....

I also said I'm confused a bit about the timelines. We don't know their exact ages but I thought Henry was a bit younger than Joyce and Hopper so connecting them directly is gonna be odd. I feel like the best route would be indirectly which I described in my other post. Writing in a personal grudge against them is a bit much. But a curse on the whole town because of something loosely related to them? Makes sense.

I think Hopper definitely knew Bob, he even calls him by his bully nickname "Bob the Brain" in season 2. I don't think Hopper himself was a bully but who knows.

Then you got Lonnie. Still don't think there's a direct connection to Henry at this point but I wouldn't be surprised if Lonnie bullied people in school such as Bob or Henry.

Anyway. It doesn't mean I'm not interested in Joyce and Hopper's past. I'm extremely curious since even Winona and David talk about it all the time. I just hope they keep everything in line since this is supposed to be a canon play. There is much to learn here but I will write some of it off if it starts contradicting the show itself like many of the comics.

While I am expecting to find out Henry's reasoning for all this, I don't expect we'll be learning why Will was targeted. They seem to be saving that for season 5. But I think we can get some clues.

I think we'll discover Henry's "trigger", what made him realize he had powers. We'll find out his moment that made him so sad and angry.

If I were to try and relate this to my own theories, such as Will having powers, it'd be pretty important to figure out what kind of person as potential and how to bring that out of someone in ways besides experimentation.

Finding out about Joyce's past in particular is a curious subject. They've hinted at family issues in the past. When Joyce was so persistent that she sensed Will around before but couldn't anymore, Lonnie immediately brings up, "Maybe it's like your aunt", implying her aunt "sensed" stuff or was generally a weirdo or had mental issues, which Joyce immediately denies.

That could be "connecting things to the past" leading to the reason why Will was targeted if Joyce passed along some potential powers to him or something.

I dunno. We shall have to see~

#ask #Anonymous

[noveratus]

I just finished watching the Witcher season 3. Here are my thoughts on this season:

First, I should make it known that I have not read any of the books and I played the witcher wild hunt very briefly since I wasn't a huge fan of the combat system, so there is a chance that I'm not the target demographic for this show. Perhaps they were trying to appeal to the fans of the series. If that is the case, I apologize for my thoughts. These are the thoughts of a casual watcher of the series who is very passionate about writing and stories and general.

The best word that I would use to describe this series and just the whole show, in a whole, is confusing. Things just seem to happen, and I am left wondering what even is the story here. The show feels both too slow and too fast for the story it is trying to tell.

Season one is by far the best. Despite the non-linear timeline, you can understand what is happening, you understand what the arcs are, what the characters want, and you have a notion of what is going on. There are still confusing moments, particularly those with the elves and Cintra. Her journey feels so slow compared to both Yen and Gerald since, once you remove all the magic and all the dressing, their stories are about family, with Gerald's being about the fear of letting people in and Yennifer's being about being accepted enough to be loved.

Then we have season two, which is just political nonsense for the most part. We barely get any time with the main trio, and it is mostly just a lot of nothing. People speak and tell your their plans and whatever, but it summarizes to a bunch of nothing. There is a 6. Everyone wants Cintra, but that's it. There is essentially just one character arc in this season that goes through a character arc with that being Yennifer, and while I do have conflicting emotions about it, it is definitely a character arc. Besides that, the closest thing you get to character development is Cintra's fight montage scenes, and while those can be fun, not everything has to be deep and sad and depressing, that is not what they are. They try to be exactly that. Bleak. Like the show is turning to you and asking, "Aren't you enjoying seeing how much these characters for basically no reason? This is what will make them stronger! They aren't really learning anything, just getting beaten until they seem like they can be excusable to be strong enough to survive what will throw on them next! Isn't this deep? Isn't this exciting? Bleak and depressing equals deep guys! C'mon!" When it comes to the plot, it is essentially people saying "shit is going to happen, shit is really going to happen. We will kill this baby. You know we will kill this baby! Wanna see us do it? We will do it! Just watch it! And hah! We did it!" And that's pretty much it. Pretty much the only thing that carries over from season 2 to three is Yen's arc, and the first thing they try to do is try to retcon it. So yes, season 2 is a boring, confusing slog where things just happen and feels very pointless.

Then we move on to season 3. Season three starts well. I honestly enjoyed the first episodes, with Yennifer trying to regain the confidence of both Gerald and Cintra, and I think it works. I enjoy seeing Cintra and Yennifer butting heads, it makes sense, they are different people who can teach each other a lot after everything they went through, and you see glimpses of this, and while Gerald's hunt doesn't make a lot of sense since he just let the guy go, I think that the subsequent plot with the fake Cintra and the missing mages is fine, I'm invested, I want to know what is going on, and then the ball happens and that is a good episode, it has mystery and this sense of magic and actual illusion and I was hyped. Truly, I couldn't wait to see where this was going, and then we had a betrayal, and then another and suddenly the elves are here, and they are the bad guys and the racist is in the right and gets treated like a hero and Ciri is there and then she isn't and why did you leave in the first place, Yennifer, if you were going to come back to help your people?! What did you think was going to happen? Sunshines and rainbows?! There is this huge battle where a lot of people die, but I'm left just confused because, oh my god, there is even more political nonsense here and it carries on through the last three episodes where, again, nothing really happens besides the nonsense politics while Gerald is recovering and I'm so done. Ok, that is not completely true. There are two segments that I would like to mention, the sorcerers and Cintra. I think that, while not that important development wise, since Cintra goes from point A to point B back to point A, the desert part is good. It is visually interesting. It shows her skills, and while bleak, it is entertaining. They are showing you something that isn't characters talking about something no one understands or trying to make something deep out of something that isn't. This is a girl trying to survive in a desert in a harsh environment. I can understand that I want her to succeed in that. Now, for the sorcerers, they are mourning, they are dealing with loss in the middle of war. I can understand and sympathize with that, but then you have Tissaia's death that is framed as this noble sacrifice when it isn't. It is sad, yes, but the audience isn't really given a moment to process that, it is framed so that her death is about Yennifer, like losing her will make her stronger and I have serious problems with any media that shows suicide as anything noble or brave or good, like one's death is preferable to them being alive.

Now, I have avoided speaking about Jaskier so far because, and I want to make it clear that Jaskier is my favorite character in this show, he is sadly pointless. Don't get me wrong, Jaskier is essentially the heart of the Witcher, but when it comes to the narrative, the story itself, he is only there for fan service. They tried to fix this with Radovid, but it still didn't work, it didn't truly affect the narrative since the most important part of Radovid's character is that he becomes the king and, so far, that has nothing to do with Jaskier. Dandelion is just there to look pretty and occasionally get saved by Gerald, which I find particularly funny during the action scenes where he just disappears or runs around with nothing to do. The sad part is, Jaskier is a bard. A man known for the art of speech and song and playing with people's emotions. He would be perfect for a political piece, which seems to be what the show is going for, but instead, they put him in situations where he is completely pointless.

So, in the end, I didn't like season 3. I liked the first half of season 3, despite its issues like the Wild Hunt bit, but the ending was disappointing. It didn't diminish my enjoyment of the first part, so that is something I guess, but still. And I want to make it clear that I don't think this is the writer's fault. I would like to put my theory hat here for a moment and take a shot saying Netflix desperately wanted the Witcher to be game of thrones. They wanted all the politics and gritty realism and bleakness from that show, but the Witcher just isn't that, is it? I haven't played the games a lot, but from what I understand, the Witcher shines most with its side missions, the ones where you don't have the end of the world, but a person trying to survive, and love, and find happiness in a world where humans seem to be at the bottom of the food chain. The Witcher's tv show seems to completely forget about monsters until it is convenient for them to remember when, in the game, even if you are powerful, there is a chance you will struggle with what you are fighting if you don't know how to fight them. And this, this sense of survival is pretty much gone in the show. It is just politics that say nothing really with a moody superman thrown in the middle of it.

#the witcher #the witcher spoilers #the witcher critical #review #the witcher criticism

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hi, to the previous anon who was talking about Loumand shippers and how shocked they will be when season 2 comes around: how about we let show fans experience the story at their own pace just like book readers did.

The story is structured that way on purpose (but mostly because Annie decided to retcon a lot of IWTV when she wrote TVL nine years later).

It makes sense to ship Loumand given where the show is at currently. When revelations happen next season, fans will probably readjust their takes, but all in due time.

What you are doing is akin to me going up to someone watching season 1 of Game of Thrones and being like, hey by the way, all the Starks die so you shouldn't root for them, oh, and Sansa's new crush Joffrey turns out to be an evil prick and he also dies, poisoned at his own wedding and Jon snow is a Targaryen.

Why??

I understand that the books have been out for decades and spoiler warnings are no longer in order, but why don't we just let new fans experience the story the way it was meant to be experienced, without jumping in to rain on their parade and hounding them about how their opinions on certain characters are wrong based on what happens in later books.

Sorry for the long rant mod, but I'm so tired of these silly shipping wars that people keep trying to start over nothing.

Ranting is fine, but I have had anons on this blog, yelling at me about Loumand... and this blog is clearly labeled as based on the books, my personal one, and not spoiler free.

Do not get me wrong, I get your point but...

That anon coming here and theorizing about how shocked the Loumand shippers will be... is not that.

They are not out there souring the experience for the shippers that think that. They are not out there, trying to convert them. They sent an anon ask to MY blog, which is labeled as pointed out above in my bio.

If someone comes to my blog and asks me things I will not lie to them just because the show has not laid out all the cards yet. I have had asks of Loumand shippers (polite, inquisitive asks) and I gently explained what they asked about, and if I notice they know not even the basics? I try to not spoil too much. Just had one of those earlier. But will I twist the story to their (at this point of course flawed) expectations? No.

All the first time watchers can experience the show as they want - but going to a book-based watcher, and in a way demanding that they pay into the tale that is spoon fed? That's something else.

When I was watching GoT (since you brought this up), I watched the first season, and then, in the hiatus, got the books. When I got to the red wedding I literally threw that book into a corner and told my partner I am pissed, I couldn't tell them why, and told them not to ask.

And they didn't.

Because they knew that asking me would spoil them. They also knew by my reaction that there was shit incoming :)

My blog is not spoiler free. It's in my bio.

It's not me going to them.

It's them coming to me.

Big, big difference.

You can mute me, block the tags, block me if you need to.

But I will not take blame for someone getting spoilered on 40 year old book content on my blog when I clearly point it out in my bio.

#Anonymous #asks #amc iwtv #iwtv #amc interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire amc #iwtv amc #iwtv 2022 #interview with the vampire #ask nalyra

[sirdust]

i need your thoughts on the new episode/s bc i genuinely don't wanna watch it myself

i am not going to rewatch the episodes if i can help it so i'm going off memory here but. sure thing anon <3

ep5: i've said it before but i forgot around 80% of what was happening in this episode as i was watching it. lucifer is a nothing character. at best, he is stolas but even less interesting. he does not serve any purpose but to repeat the doubts that have already been expressed around charlie's project. his reconciliation with charlie comes out of nowhere and there's no reason for them to have fallen out in the first place since he is clearly loving and wants to compromise with her. he's boring and so was the episode.

i feel like it was also trying to be an alastor episode but doing a very bad job at it. alastor has had no character development occur on screen at all. there's a bit with husk thag doesn't work because it needed to be established earlier; as-is it feels like a way to try and show that alastor IS on a similar level of abusive to valentino, but that 100% should've happened before ep4. more to the point, he implies to mimzy that he cares about the hotel project, but this (again) does not make sense because we have not seen him grow to care at all. the dad/daughter angle they try to push with him and charlie also has zero setup. they've spoken maybe two sentences to each other in the season proper.

ep6: dumpster fire. the exorcist vaggie reveal is poorly handled and there is no reason charlie shouldn't know about it, let alone have it be this big liar revealed moment. the scene of vaggie being demoted is extremely fast and difficult to follow because there is no time to sit with the drama at all; the reason she defects is so cliche there's no point in commenting on it.

"nobody knows how people get into heaven" when it was angels who created heaven is a confusing plot point and a bad way of saying the criteria to get into heaven is arbitrary. it fails at being morally gray because there is nothing about heaven worth protecting, and the only reason sinners are killed is to prevent an uprising. emily realizing heaven is wrong over the course of one song is terribly rushed, and the reveal of vaggie's former angel status to charlie, as a moment, is silly. the b-plot with cherri at the club is bad all the way through. cherri's character is assassinated and treated like an after-school special villain, the rivalry between her and pentious is dissolved in favor of a crush that was not properly established at all (and which retcons their dynamic from the pilot), the SA joke with pentious is conceptually awful, and angel's character development is badly handled in every way. he's rejecting drugs and standing up to valentino out of absolutely nowhere, and it's presented as if husk is the primary reason for his progress, which is bad for all sorts of reasons. i've talked about why the b-plot is so bad already, i think, so i don't want to ramble on about it too long.

the overall pacing of the season (ep1-3 taking place over 2 weeks, ep4 taking place somewhere between 2 weeks-almost 5 months later, and ep5-6 taking place 5 months later) is also the worst i've ever seen.

idk what happened with the writing but it's bad.

#asks #anon

[black-rose-writings]

Watching Shadow and Bone Season 2: Episode 1 - I am losing braincells fast

Okay, I finally have time. Let's do this.

Firstly, sorry if I miss some visual details, I am watching it on a very legal site that unfortunately has something of a potato quality.

S1 Intros looked better.

Alina is looking around in her pretty little dream sequence like "My Saints, life is so emo right now."

Sasha, my beloved.

Wasting sickness my ass.

And there is Mal, assuring her that Sasha is dead.

Where did Alina get her new fancy dress, if they've been on a ship since the end of S1? And her hair grew a lot for it being just two weeks... sorry, nit picks, but like... her hair was not that long and it doesn't grow all that much in two weeks.

Oh, look, Ketterdam. Surely, Alina will not face any danger of being kidnapped and sold into slavery, despite there being a million kruge bounty on her head last season.

So, what exactly do they think they'll find in Kerch. At least when they were running in the books, they just wanted to get to the frontier to disappear there. But like, you two don't have shit to your name... ah, I'm barely like 2 minutes in and I'm already rambling.

Oh, look, Kaz arranged them fake passports... somehow. While they were all on a ship.

*stop thinking about the details, stop thinking about the details, or you'll drive yourself crazy*

So, when exactly did she decide to go after the Sea Whip? Why does she believe it's real? Fuck, I'm doing it again.

Ah, yes, let's talk about our plans and identities openly in public where anyone can hear us.

Also, love how this is 100% the opposite of book Mal. Kinda unironially. Book!Mal can go die in a ditch.

So, we're sticking to the stange season 1 plot of Alina being some kind of a clairvoyant, huh?

Or, wait, are they in Novyi Zem? I guess they are. Okay, nevermind my first few points, I am an idiot.

I know season 1 did weird time jumps, too, but this is going to be very jarring.

Oh, look, Inej still not scared one bit of Haleen.

And... that's what happens when you leave town for months on a whim. You dunce.

Oh, look, Kaz's backstory.

Not sure how I feel about this weird twist, but sure, let's see where this goes.

I'm sorry, who did they even kill? WTF is that?

I mean, I know Ketterdam kinda sucks, but that went down way too quickly.

And Kaz trying not to lose his shit because he's surrounded by people. Well, at least that's book accurate.

Love how the guy next to Jesper is staring at him like "bro, who you talking to".

Okay, what the fuck is happening.

Oh, look at that, we are not completely ignoring that Kaz and co. got hired to kidnap and sell Alina. Well, her side of the story will, but hey, at least it's not completely glossed over like the fucking maps.

Okay, excuse, what the actual fuck is this? What in the name of hell is Nikolai doing. I am confused and not in a good way. I feel like we're missing... a lot of context. Like, a lot.

Okay, so let me get this straight... the way that they get around the "Crows planned to sell Alina into slavery" plot line is... by retconning it so that Nikolai was behind it all along. For some Saints-forsaken reason. Well, Alina is still dumb as bricks, but okay I guess.

Fjerda made ship-art. Of Darklina. For their bounty poster. (Or is this part of the whole retarded "Aleksander is working with the Fjerdans for some reason" plotline.

My question is where they got the visual reference from since everyone except for Crows and Alina-and-co. got murdered.

Kaz, mentally: Jesper, you idiot.

Wow, look at that. Room like for a queen. Wonder where they got the money from. Definitelly an upgrade from the bed-bug infested group room of the book.

At least take your fucking shoes off you barbarian!

Mal is down for travelling the world. Wow, they really pulled a full 180 on this bitch, huh?

Ew. Just ew.

Thank the Saints for cockblocking fishermen. I will vomit if they go any further.

Kaz, screaming internally: Shut the fuck up Jesper.

Oh, look, we still doing the whole "paying with jewelry got her tracked down" thing. Just, slightly less retarded.

Hold up, are we saying Jesper and Kaz are having the conversation now. Like, come on, they've worked with each other for a long time, there's no way this didn't come up before.

That is way more than 20 seconds, just saying.

Oh, look, another Alina dream sequence.

Okay, so is that like a Tether thing or is she just having prophetic dreams? If it's the Tether, how does Sasha already know what Mal is, they spoke like 2 times. If it's prophetic dreams... why though?

Language barrier? What language barrier?

Ravkan Grisha? Of all places? Is she talking about the pogroms that happened after the Fold expanded? Cause if I understand the timeline correctly, there's no way the news have spread that far, yet.

I mean, even in Novyi Zem, Grisha are not safe, in the books. There might not be society-wide prejudice, but there's also not any protection from, you know, slavers and shit (or at least not enough). Ravkan Grisha might be soldiers, but that's not exactly an uncommon profession in this world.

(calm down. You can rant later)

Please tell me this interaction isn't the reason Alina is going to go "All lives matter" on her Grisha status.

Also, how come the maps are marked in Ravkan? Again, language barrier is not a thing here.

Alina being the most suspicious thief ever.

Also, ehm, what the actual fuck is that map doing?

Wow, look at Alina, definitelly not attracting any attention with her summoning.

Why are these two talking about it... in the library of all places?

Also, I'm pretty sure public libraries with all this quantity of information available to just anyone were not a thing until the early 20th century, which the Grishaverse is most certainly not.

Dear god, this is so dumb.

Who drew that shit that it's so accurate that the people actually recognize her by it? At least when she had the physical collar in the books it made sense why everyone recognized her.

Mal being no less suspicious about asking about this shit.

For some reason, there's First Army here. Is that Bohdan from season 1? Why the fuck is he of all people in Novyi Zem?

I know the plot needs to move forwar, but this is a bit too many coincidences for my taste.

Mal's doing parkour, because we've gone 20 minutes without an action scene and if nothing happens for too long, people will start to question our dumb-fuck narrative choices.

Also, the question stands. Where the fuck did Mal and Alina get their money.

Not that I am a big fan of the King's army, but like... just shoot him. He's gonna hang for desertion, anyway. You had a gun to his head, already.

And look, how much of a badass Mal is, taking down a handful of soldiers of equal training without much trouble.

Really... you're trying to stay hidden and you've just found out there's a massive bounty on your head and you... summon in a square full of people.

I don't know why I'm bothering to use my brain anymore.

Random Zemeni people decide to protect her because... she's a Saint? I guess?

Zemeni people believe in the Saints, I guess.

Okay... let's see if they can at least write a convincing sibling dynamic when they don't intend for those two characters to fuck.

Tamar sounding far too 21st century and that's not how people talk, in general. (I say as if I talk to people).

As much as I love the bounty posters, I do have to say, I don't get how they have such a good drawing on them so quickly.

Why is Inej stealing random people's knives?

They killed Haleen. Off screen.

I mean, I guess that's one way to avoid Inej's absolutely amazing, very important and already ruined by last season revenge moment. However...

I am not saying this just because they changed the story and I know they needed to include them again, since they did last season, but like... I don't trust these writers to do these characters an ounce of justice. Or make up an alternative story that makes even a little bit of sense.

And there's still 20 minutes of an episode left. FML.

Okay, hot take, I liked book!Pekka more. This one is far too much of a cartoon villain and not in a fun way. Kaz was the one for whom it was personal. Pekka was just doing business. So, either Pekka is being pupeteered by someone else (which would make the level of too complex and dumb to work conspiracy way too high. Like, it already is, but this would be over 9000) or they really made Pekka into a cartoon villain who would hunt down one guy for a single (fake) million kruge job.

And just like that, everyone in the room went deaf.

Oh, look, Wylan. He's baby.

Inej somehow got caught sneaking in the shadows. Book!Inej would be disappointed.

Ah, yes, asking a random stranger to help break your boyfriend out of the most secure and shitty prison in all of Kerch, like, right now, something which took a lot of planning and a lot of work in the book.

(stop comparing it to the book, we know it was better, you'll drive yourself crazy)

I think telling them you're innocent when you're being dragged into the cell is... a little pointless?

I am still asking the money question.

And that's Sturmhond's ship, isn't it?

Ew 2.

Dear god, they're still using the fucking pins. They didn't have to. They could have completely avoided it. They didn't have to do it. I feel personally attacked by the inclusion of the pins.

How does Alina not realize the boat people are after her, too, right now, is beyond me. Like... my dude, my lass, nobody is going to put their life on the line for one shitty pin.

Are we getting Sasha. Please tell me we're getting Sasha being the best leader and the best character, please, I need a little bit of common sense before I lose my shit.

So... the first army is doing the sham trials of Grisha. And Aleksander is going to save them. And he's still the villain and not the monarchy. Okay. Sure.

Is that Genya?

Tell me, if this is what happens, how in the hell is she going to join Alina, who is supporting the King.

Please, tell me the show is gonna go for a "Fuck the monarchy" twist.

The First army is laughing as they're preparing to murder a bunch of innocent people. I think it's only fair that I cheer on once Sasha and the Nichevoya tear them to bits.

It's Sasha to the rescue!!!!! Hell yeah.

Now that is a hero's entrance. Moi Soverennyi!

Ah, yes, time to catch up.

Oh, look, Alina being a dumb bitch finally but her in the ass.

Well, not really, we know it's Nikolai, but Saints I wish it did.

#shadow and bone #shadow and bone netflix #shadown and bone season 2 #review #grishaverse #long post #took me 2 and a half hours to get through a 1 hour episode because it's so bad

[rhineposting]

hiiiii tell me your thoughts on odalia blight. rate her too pls. bless you *guy with hand behind head but /pos*

OMG HEY GIRLLLLLLLLLLL DW I'LL TELL YOU EVERYTHINGGG More of this special episode below the cut!

So. From the moment I first saw Odalia back in Understanding Willow, I knew she was going to be the stereotypical evil mom. Because of course, when there is a coming of age story featuring a teenage protagonist's friend group, statistically speaking one of their parents are definitely abusive. However, in comparison to someone else I shall not mention by name, her depiction as an abusive parent felt... Flat. To me, it was as if her cartoonish evil as depicted in Understanding Willow was supposed to be abuse viewed through a child's eye, simplified for the sake of easier understanding that it was wrong. Again, Owl House is a children's show on paper. Though, unlike other concepts depicted in Season 1... Her character was just left as that as she was introduced. Personally, I couldn't even begin to enjoy her. Her every action was so predictable, while her lines were dead set on reminding the viewer every five seconds that she's an Evil Yet Elegant Business Mom. It was, if I have to be honest, painful to watch. For someone supposedly so charming, I couldn't care less about her. Also. While I am aware that not all parental abuse is subtle and refined (as was depicted with the old man), I feel like with her, the writers took it a bit too far the opposite side. Too obvious. Too obnoxious. It's like she wasn't even trying to convince her children that she's a good mother, despite reassuring them that all her actions were for their sake. It was odd, to say the least. That, and I feel like Alador being retconned from being just as abusive to being a clumsy ditzy blorbo old man (I said what I said) certainly did not help her situation, since she then had to be twice as abusive for both of them, if that makes sense, thus having to be several different types of an abusive parent all at once - which resulted in a loud, obnoxious mish-mash of an archetype. Personally, I think if the writers decided on a trope for her and were consistent with it, she could have been a pretty convincing and entertaining villain. Who knows, maybe even a girlboss. Alas, we're left with... Karen the CEO, pretty much. My final rating is 2/10 for trying. Again, all of this is just my subjective, personal opinion. I'd be more than happy to hear other people's arguments and thoughts about her and possibly expand my view on her. There's only so much that one person can notice about a character after all. That will be all!

#odalia blight #odalia toh #toh #the owl house #rhine questions #rhine rambling tag #Maybe I should start categorizing these character studies somehow. #Rhine Character Studies

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

(Note: All of these asks are before episode 206 (Season 2 finale) so some may be dated.) 1. Am I just dumb or do the lo fans who insist we "see" how powerful Persephone is are actually lying? Because sure we'vr see big trees and once or twice seen "wild" vegetation, but have we ever actually SEEN her use her powers? and no the AOW doesn't count since that wasn't her actually doing it willingly (such a dumb retcon). IDK it seems like we've seen more instances of  Hades using their powers all the time yet we've never actually seen the supposed "chosen one" Persephone once use her own.

2. It's so frustrating how there's no reflection on Rachel nor the fandom's part for how Eros is depicted. When he's around Persephone he starts acting more "feminine" and even gets design-wise to look more "feminine" with his posing, eyelashes, beauty marks, and slimed down with more androgynous clothes, but as soon as he's with Psyche he's depicted as much taller, muscular, and in darker more "manly" outfits with chiseled features. I don't even think it's intentional, but it's very hmm induing.

3. At the begging of LO RS made it seem like Persephone didn’t have many friends or that her friends were kinda just spies for Demeter so she kept them at arms length, where we’d see that Artemis is suppose to be her first “real friend” and I guess Eros too? But no this whole time she had dead flower nymphs that didn’t get named almost 200 episodes in; and after mentioning said dead flower Nymphs Persephone wants to watch Hades’ first meeting with herself where she was naked/he was drunk so they can have a laugh. 

4. NGL I want RS to cover the Trojan War bc I want to see what absolutely stupid ideas she'd put into it but also I just know she'd make Helen hashtag Empowered™️ by wanting Paris and being complacent in the deaths of thousands and be weirdly anti Menelaus who is clearly the bad guy here but also she'd make sure Helen's "beauty" is in comparing her to Persephone because of course you can't have anyone be hotter than her. I can see it vividly and it's horrendous.

5. I mean idk making LO be 100 give or take episodes would have probably been for the better. Im not saying it couldnt be a bit longer than that, but she's basically restarted the whole story 200+ episodes in, so there's really no excuse to claim she HAD to have all these episodes when other popular webtoons got their stories done in a good way without such an excessive amount. IMHO A short but strong story is so much better than a dragged out, weak story like LO has turned into.

6. TBH I'm surprised LO hasn't done a "cancellation' plotline yet. I can see it now, Hades ranting the media is trying to ruin Persephone's reputation and trying to take away all her prospects and shaming her for the harmless crime of mass murder. Probably throw in some "it is misogyny to critique her" for good measure and with zero reflection as he's in his massive mansion as he gets rich off ongoing slave labor. I feel like just off her handling of Thanatos we'll get it eventually.

7. I was going to say why is there never any gay renderings of HxP only to remember than one MLM comic on Canvas that just rips off LO down exact plot points and the only major WLW version i've seen was a book so hyper violent towards Persephone (with female Hades?? loving to abuse her??) and hateful of Demeter it actually made me sick to my stomach. Anyway outlaw HxP retellings i've had ENOUGH 🗣

8. the fans claiming "rachel is giving persephone a CHOICE" which like for one, who says she has the authority? but even then she's still, you know, a fictional character, she doesnt have agency by the mere fact she's fiction, so at the very least it has to be written into her character to make choices within the narrative, but rachel doesnt even do that? stuff just HAPPENS to persephone and she doesnt react, she's just yanked along. rachel doesnt even write her to make choices, she just exists.

9. its funny rachel claims LO is some empowering feminist story when its like, even barring the clear fact its NOT, the "feminism" is basically the "more 👏🏽 female 👏🏽 CEOS 👏🏽"logic of not actually fixing old power structures and creating equality. the system doesnt need to change, it just needs to be more accessible, which doesnt actually fix anything. making persephone be another CEO doesnt make it suddenly feminist, she's just now profiting from an unfair system like the men already do.

10. People are calling Hades "Persephone's husband" 🤡 yes we all know how it will end but at this point he is merely a guy she knew for 3 weeks 10 years ago. Calling him husband is ridiculous.

#anti lo #anti lore olympus #lore olympus critical #lo critical

[kurokoros]

If they don't put the stage play on Netflix, what's the point, because I'm from a non English speaking country. How am I supposed to know stuff when that play won't be in our theaters? It takes also so much time to translate it in order to be played. It's stupid, honestly why not give us the information in the actual show? Or make a separate mini series. They just should have given us more episodes within the show, even if they are just "filler" ones. God I hate this so much because I just know as an international fan I keep losing yet again, which makes me upset. Every time someone claims the Duffers are geniuses I have to laugh because did we watch the same show? Stranger things had so much potential, it hurts me physically what they have done, especially to the characters, worldbuilding aside but the way they assassinated 70% of the main characters for action plots is insane to me. Def hard to be a Steve stan when we get nothing each season.

I'm not a huge fan of any secondary media for works of fiction that have direct tie-ins to the primary media. Like, a huge part of why I refuse to get into the MCU is because it's basically impossible to enjoy later films without having watched everything else.

With Stranger Things I think it would be fine to do tie-in media that's part of a shared universe, but has absolutely nothing to do with the Hawkins characters. Because why the hell do we need a prequel about Hopper and Joyce? In stage play format? When nothing sci-fi has happened in Hawkins yet?

S4 was an absolutely shitty attempt at trying to tie everything into a nice big bow with Vecna/Henry/One and I absolutely hated it. Like, wow Duffers you introduced three new characters with mystery backgrounds??? Obviously they're all the same fucking person. And now we need a prequel about Hopper, Joyce, and Henry Creel? I'm already mad about the Creel murder retcon because a huge part of S1 was how Hawkins is a small town where nothing bad happens, and then the town is suddenly bombarded with missing person's cases (and a suicide that doesn't make sense), and the Duffers directly took away from that premise when they threw in a mysterious family murder that no one mentioned for three seasons.

I'm not even going to talk about the stage play anymore. I'm not going to watch it purely on principle because I can't think of a worse waste of time than a tie-in stage play. Like... we know what happened with the last stage play tie-in to a major franchise.

I'm just pissed about how far Stranger Things has fallen from S1 and S2. The early seasons actually focused on the characters and their trauma. Now everyone is a caricature with a vague semblance of personality, the worldbuilding is inconsistent, and the plotlines are horrible. I know some people think Stranger Things is slow-paced and somewhat boring, but I really do wish there was more filler to fully flesh out the characters. They could even add more action to the filler. Win-win.

I haven't trusted the Duffers' writing since S3 when they did that to Hopper. I also don't like the way they made Steve into kind of a loser. blah blah blah people will argue that it makes him endearing because the internet loves pathetic wet men, but there's a clear shift between S1-2 Steve and S3 Steve specifically, and the shift is that they made him stupid and took his charisma out back and shot it because they're insecure nerds who hate jocks.

The Duffer Brothers don't have teeth. Regardless of what they say, they aren't willing to make bold choices with their storytelling. They aren't willing to flesh out their characters more, or delve into their trauma. They aren't willing to make the world--the Upside Down--a real threat to the characters, because that means raising the stakes and needing to come up with more clever solutions to the plot than "El screams at the monster until it dies".

Regardless, I'm not watching the stage play. I'm only watching S5 because I still want to see how the story wraps up, but I'm not going to hold my breath about it being good.

#alisha babbles #anonymous #stranger things #strangerthoughts #stranger thoughts

[mimiri22-6]

Since I have concluded that one of my favorite og posts still hold up after watching the netflix ver of Bee and Puppycat, I will be repeating it for more people to see my 3 day long essay that was my pinned post for 2 years

Without further adieu, my spoiler heavy essay of every season 2 episode of Bee and Puppycat with updated notes

Gentle Touch

In the first episode we already get a big game changer for Bee and her development[not as much now because with the new first episode they Did sprinkle in a bit more responsibility onto her. See; Bee taking the fire for Deckard]. Bee becoming more responsible as a favor for Deckard. He asks her to take care of his family while he’s at cooking school and we already see her doing this. Going out to the ocean with Wesley, going out of her comfort zone for people she’s practically family to, which is why we got the beginning flashback, once again going out of her comfort zone to stop Puppycat from punching kittens, And Finally, coming out from her nap cupboard to face Howl and help pay for bills by eating ugly food.

Little Fingers

Ooh, this one has foreshadowing dream sequence. I would say more about it if it had more significance, but it’s really just what happens to Bee in the last ep. This episode brings more of Bee being responsible, trying to take her phone away from Puppycat so he stops making bad purchases. This episode made me realize what Puppycat’s role is this season, the child[not really, I even knew this then, it doesn't fit. It's weird and I still don't know how to put it. Sometimes he's responsible sometimes not. Maybe that's just how people work]. Or something among those lines. He’s the same as he was last season, but it seems/is a bit more exaggerated because Bee isn’t doing the same things anymore[Again, it's been a bit retconned]. She’s started to care about consequences. And speaking about consequences, Toast announces she’s pregnant while confirming that she’s been staying…in Cass’s room?…weird, but ok, and by Tim pointing and Merlin’s reaction, it’s Merlin’s…but also everyone else seemed like they thought they were the culprit and I don’t want to think about the implications of that[I Still don't wanna think about the implications of this -_-]….MOVING ON-OH WAIT, And Cardamon’s mom is spouting magic tears that messes with the plants, so there’s that[I. Still. Have no idea. What the deal with the tears. Where. All I can think of is...bring life?? Her implied being a magical entity because of the music box? Makes?...Something????].

Snow and Violets

I’m going to be honest, I’m not 100% sure what to put here and I’m loosing steam. (I’ve been awake since 3 am…) But I think I can put something. The situation with Mr. Cup is the definition of being haunted by your past[Man, I was on the money w/ this. Well, mostly. As I was watching it again earlier, I was thinking more along the lines of 'redeemed villain' but not that extreme. Just overall, someone that did things they aren't proud of anymore and they can't seem to leave it. See; the entire world is a looping racetrack in the shape of an infinity symbol]. The guilt and regret of cheating in the past has made him lose his motivation to give it his all in racing because, what’s the point? Motivation and not caring was his norm, so he just stuck with it. Until Bee, and now he can be a rainbow and sleep with less guilt and regret on his conscience. The thing with the island rapidly changing could be one of three things. Something to do with the ship that is the island, a metaphor for change, or something really cool the creators just wanted.

Day off Work

Not Too much to note for this ep overall. Puppycat totally did do the ‘wrecking the house in search for the owner’ thing dogs do. Finally, a dog trait! Every time I see Cardamon now I just get sad cause he’s 7, and should Not be doing landlord stuff. Bee showing worry about how Cardamon’s mom is still asleep and being worried about Cardamon himself, I’m just glad someone’s noticing. I keep forgetting that some people haven’t watched the pilot so they don’t know about Puppycat being a Space Outlaw[Now the pilot is in the showw, hell yeah], so when he found all his stuff under the apartment I was less surprised and more excited. The two last things I want to say is I think it’s interesting/cool/intriguing how the Wizard family just takes every weird thing either in stride, unquestioningly, or ignorance. Just trying to pretend it didn’t happen so they don’t have to deal with it(other than Crispin, but he’s coming up). And the last thing I just want to bring to light is CARDAMON BEING SO CUTE IN THE LAST SCENE! JUST BEING A CHILD! AND LAUGHING WITH HIS DOG! ON A FUNNY CHAIR! I LOVE HIM YOUR HONOR AND I WILL PROTECT THAT SMILE WITH MY WHOLE BEING!!![I WILL STILL PROTECT THAT SMILE!!!]

My Favorite

Note, Pretty Patrick is also The Mayor. Alright. It’s definitely been a few months and you can see the relationship between Howl and Bee has gotten better, not that it was too bad to begin with, just a bit less peeved on Howl’s end. The theme of Bee being responsible is brought into play again with the train station scene. Telling Puppycat to not hit and the way Puppycat was acting around Patrick. All little kid stuff. Which also kind of clashes with what I thought was Puppycat being older than Bee by a lot, I’m honestly slowly getting more and more confused exactly how I should perceive Puppycat[still a bit confused, but not as much anymore, thx show]. THE FIRST REAL LOOK AT THE HAND GUYS! I’m still not sure what their deals are, but they have a corpse on their hands and that is already the biggest red flag. I have a guess as to what/who they are in relation to Puppycat and, by acquaintance, Bee, but I could be wrong, but I also can’t think of any other people they may be. I’ll bring it back up either the next time we see them or at the end.

Did You Remember

Grampa Puppycat cares about his granddaughter a whole lot[gosh that scene where he's babysitting her? T-T man, guys, I love them and this show]. Don’t @ me, their dynamic is more confusing than a moving maze…Now this episode, ooh boy, it feels like a lot, but in a minimal way? First off, Cardamon finally breaks down about the stress of being a 7 year old landlord and Bee takes care of him for the day. Big Sis Bee For The Win! DON’T @ ME I MAKE UP MY OWN FAMILY DYNAMICS!!![YOU TELL 'M PAST ME!] Kind of continuing from the first sentence, Puppycat and Bee love each other(I Stand By Platonically For Them)[Still severely do. I Do Not Shipp It. I never have and I never will] so much already, for them it’s been a little over a year[reading this, I just realized this isn't true, puppycat knew bee when she was little(I still think she was a real girl at some point but she got sick and her dad put her in a robot-OH MY GOD I AM REMEMBERING THE SCENE ON THE BEACH AND HER DAD SAYS SHE WAS ASLEEP FOR 3 DAYS ALREADY! SHE WAS YOUNG! OH NO)] considering Puppycat fell into Bee’s life before her last birthday and now they’re celebrating another one. And I must admit, I can not for the life of me figure out wtf the deal is with the tears. They have little shapes of recent events in them[If the tears are never fully explained, especially the little precognition shapes, I think I would actually loose it] and they make plants weird/straight up just make life! Like, What Even Is That?! Also, Cardamon finally gets a good sleep.

Bird Friend

Ok, so we got more ship pieces, a most likely reason as to why Puppycat was Like That in the last few episodes of season 1 and has been goopy every now and again in this season. Apparently eating things he shouldn’t eat make him Extremely off model and goopy[mmmm, I'm not sure about this one anymore. the onnly other time he's goopy now, that I can remember, is in little fingers, like his molecules were being messed with so his form was having trouble staying]. More hands! But not the rest of them this time around. I wonder if Sticky’s hunt for all the birds has any significance other than showing us another piece[the birds are like glowing and following the ship in the last ep now?? Bourgeoisie??]. Puppycat breaking down and spilling a few secrets after stress eating off the floor and Bee immediately saying no to someone else telling her what’s wrong with Puppycat and letting him come to her first instead of forcing him is always such a good lesson to have. Also, Cass is into weirdly shaped shiny things[CONFETTIIII CANNONNNN! 🎉].

Two Clown Noses

Ah, it’s this one. The one that Really throws a wrench into the Bee/Deckard ship[I no longer shipp]. THEY’RE BOTH SO CUTE! I CAN’T CHOOSE!!! This entire episode is just Crispin and Bee hanging out with the added angst of the beginning ‘story’. This world is full of such amazingly crazy characters and Crispin’s backstory is one of those crazier ones. Bee and him Lived Together and Know Each Other, he knows she’s a robot! My only question is, what happened that they broke up? WAIT- DID THEY EVEN BREAK UP?![reading this, I am embarrassed. No one look at me.] It would be weird if they weren’t because they were living together and then they decide to live separate again would make no sense. I think I just jumped to the weirdest conclusion…Anyway! How would Puppycat get sick? I feel like that was just another thing they added to create different dynamics. The beginning birthday thing and the conclusion felt so real even though the cause was something so out there that I feel like only animated shows like this could pass, but also I feel like someone out there has done something similar, so what do I know. Yeah, not much else about this episode, it was mostly just Bee/Crispin stuff and character stuff. Gosh they’re so cute…but so is Bee/Deckard. Being a multishipper is hard…[I no longer shipp either, even though both Crispin and Decard still show atraction and admiration for Bee, and Bee is a bit hard to read depending on the situation. But I do know one thing on Bee's end, she has not blushed or shown a certain interest in Deckard. I can not tell what her feelings for Crispin are atm tho]

Funny Lying

RIGHT! THEY’RE CALLED THE WARLOCKS! THAT’S THE TITLE I WAS FORGETTING![Ok, so the Warlords. They only recently started working at...wherever tf they're working at, the jobs are from their dads, presumidly the previous warlords, and their position is to find Puppycat, they most likely work for the kingdom that Turned Puppycat. Conclusion; Their dads were there for the turning, or they're part of a long line of Warlords chasing Puppycat through the years] Tim knows everyone’s secrets, comes with the perk of having a lot of time and not talking much, you observe everyone else while they think you’re doing something else. I know from experience. Eavesdropping is a specialty of mine. SHIT THIS IS THE ONE WHERE CASS GETS THE MESSAGE DISSING HER FOR FALLING FOR TOAST FROM A COWORKER! I caught those vibes during the first season, but then the first half of this season came along and I was forced to drop those vibes in favor of cannon because TOAST WAS PREGOS WITH ONE OF CASS’S BROTHER’S KIDS![Which is now Toast going through any means neccesary to stay in Cass' life. Other than asking her out. Hate to break it to ya, Toast, but this is, somehow, not heterosexual behavior] I’m good at catching gay vibes in fictional worlds, but I’m shit in the real world, just like everything else. And the thing is, we don’t get Any kind of explanation/closure for the entire rest of the season![WE STILL DON'T] We see Toast totally shocked reaction, probably moments before she was going to sneak attack Cass, but froze upon seeing that text. AND WE GET NOTHING ABOUT THAT FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON! Anyway, that was only like 2 minutes into the ep, this is taking forever. We got more Bee being responsible for Cardamon and getting rid of the tears, but the biggest part of this episode is undoubtedly Puppycat’s scenes. We got him sinking to the bottom of the ocean and getting cradled by flowers created by the tears next to the ship. We find out he was bullied and ridiculed in school as a kid and his best friend(idk what else they would be counted as), Violet, convinced him to leave their planet after they accidently summon their ship, leaving Puppycat’s mother behind. seeing how he cried about leaving her she seems to have been a great caretaker and he loved her immensely[Was she...Already dead?? His declaration of how he's going to miss his mom feels more subdued]. We get the scene of Bee’s dad as a baby/Very young child on a mission[WHICH REMINDS ME! WTF WAS GOING ON IN THAT REPAIR SCENE IN EP 3????], giving a presentation, and finding the candy to be a source of energy by cracking it open. Making me think, ‘Is that Bee’s fuel source? If it is, how would not taking full doses for two years effect her?’ because in the first season she splits the candy in half to share with Puppycat[She no longer does this, but she has shared it w Cardamon in the past, making this question still relevant(also do they really share a bday because if they do then Awwwww!!)] and in this season she didn’t eat the candy at all[This is still cannon, and I'm still worried about her because of how the season ends]. Makes me even more worried for the future knowing what state she’s in when this season ends. With the last flower fever dream/memory it seems that the princess that he fell in love with was the one to make the final move to turning him into a ‘monster.’

Golden Eyes

(I’m getting more and more tired as this goes one. I started doing this at around 12 this morning and now it’s nearing 6 pm. I’m loosing it!) We got another birthday and it’s Howl’s this time, though it’s not really his episode. The fish are attracted to the wish crystals for some reason and one eats a bit of it to be ‘human’ for a day. I love how the fish hated being a human and Wesley didn’t even notice it was a date. I wasn't even sure if it was or not throughout, but ending on that was funny. We got the return of the major douche from the season 1 finally and a mention of Moully[MOULLY!!! :D]. 

Why Don’t You Help Me?

(I took a break between episodes, aka I went tf to sleep, because I was falling asleep at the table and not really processing everything enough for what I’m trying to do) Ok, so this is a day in the life of Cardamon episode with supposed parelles to the Warlocks. We start with the red one stuck and the others unwilling to help…and then they start drawing Puppycat’s face on the 5th one’s corpse-and these guys just do not care that it’s a dead body that they supposedly killed themselves. In short, they have all my fear because they are uncaring about body counts. Cardamon still goes to school on top of being a self proclaimed landlord and gets made fun of for being responsible and tattling at every chance he gets. Something I just noticed too is, at first I just assumed he was finally getting tired after being an adult in a child’s body for who knows how long, but now I’m thinking if he’s supposed to be asleep with Violet, his mom, then the reason for him being so tired is being awake too long. It could most likely be both, too. Just like Cardamon, I have no idea what all the tears mean. In the most recent one was see Moully as the charm in the center. What’s the pattern with these? Again we see Bee being responsible and taking care of Cardamon, making sure he gets home safe, tucking him in, and pulling an all night favor so he can sleep and get to school in the morning. Speaking of that, I can’t say I like Cardamon’s teachers all that much. I could rant about them, but this is already long and they’re not worth it[No, no I WILL rant about it! Why the FUCK do they Look Like That?! Supposedly, their first hookup was in the bubble, but they're clothes are torn, stained, asymetrical, and just overall a mess durring the whole ep. And I will not take getting down and dirty as an answer because even though they obviously want eachother like that, they do not have the vibes of being together before. I don't wanna think about this anymore, I just don't like them]. My only real question is, why the hell are their clothes so ragged and dirty? Do they not know how to bathe? Just, WTF? (either that or they’re Really not trying to hide their *ahem* activities from the kids, which just makes me want to punch sense into them or something)

Now I’m Really Alone

MOULLY!!!! Sorry, I just love him a lot. From what I can put together, he’s some kind of gift giving being. Giving wishes, exchanging good deeds and quick favors for other good deeds and favors. Just being Really nice and wanting to help everyone he comes across[He's only known a handfull of people for as long as he can remember T-T; his boss, Bee, Deckard, and the Warlords T0T]. This episode makes me see so much in common between Bee and Moully[They are instant brainwave friends your honor]. They both want to help even when they don’t know how. Making messes and finding ways clean up those messes out of guilt and the feeling of obligation. They both have lost things they need to pick up and the knowledge that they have all the time in the world because they’ve both been alive for so long. It keeps getting hinted, but now kind of confirmed, that the Wizard’s know Bee is Weird because they haven’t seen her age[young old lady]. Hell, seeing how she interacts with Cardamon she could have even baby sat them[yep]. So all the Wizard’s know she’s Weird and, supposedly, only Crispin knew she was a robot. That was until Deckard found out in the season 1 finale. Once again bringing up the point of people in the Wizard family finding something out and ignoring it and hiding it. In the season 1 finaly, Tim asked Cass if Deckard wasn’t depressed anymore, practically saying that Deckard has some form of depression. Depression being a mental illness that runs in families, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that some other members of the family have similar problems. One of the things I remember depression doing is the person will see a problem and ignore it. Something that many people in this show do with the weirdness around them and the emotional states/situations of the other people in the show. This season is about finally seeing the thing you’ve been ignoring and doing something about it. And that’s what Bee’s been doing this season, taking charge and finally getting her junk out of the ocean and getting REALLY far out of her comfort zone. She HATES water and the ocean[thinking about the beach scene again, she only hates the water in her older years...], but she’s diving in to take back what’s hers and cleaning up a mess. There’s A Lot to analyze with this episode, the similarities of Moully’s and Bee’s situations and personalities, Puppycat being the responsible one again for the long run of things, the tears and how the wish crystals work, and the state of multiple character’s minds. Ignorance is bliss until it isn’t.

I Won’t Leave You Alone

Ok, SO MANY NOTES! Which makes sense seeing how it’s the last episode. First off, THOSE WARLOCK BASTDARDS VIOLATED MOULLY AND IF THEY WERE REAL I WOULD THROTLE THEM TILL THEIR HEADS POPPED OFF!!! I am a very protective person when it comes to things I care about. And I’m going to say it here and now incase something comes up of it, Cooking Prince gives be Colorful Vibes[he still does, you do not follow someone without knowing their name unless you Like like them. Mans only saw him from a distance and talked to him once. Looking a bit sus there, chap], if you know what I mean. You don’t follow someone home and bother them when they don’t want to be bothered unless you’re Into into them. That’s all I’m saying and if nothing comes of it, I will drop it. I’m barely hanging onto it to begin with[It's been years, I'm holding onto them like a lifeline. I wanna see Deckard and CP kiss onscreen]. So, last episode we watched one of three hands punching the other hands to let Moully go, and in this episode it’s confirmed that the day Moully was pulled through the void, the 5th warlock died. My theory with that is, the 5th one was against getting Puppycat in some way and retaliated by fighting them off of Moully and then the others retaliated by killing them in some way. And the tears in this episode didn’t give life to the corpse, but grew new life over top of it, the tears can’t bring the dead back. The ship gets put back together and we see Puppycat being pretty selfish again[I wish I could say he was bringing it online to take care of the threat, but-it just doesn't seem like it at first. Sure the modivation might have changed durring reconstuction, but that's about as far i think it goes], bringing the ship online while Bee gets scooped trying to help Moully. He indirectly helped, but only after he got what he wanted. Cooking Prince, an outsider, brings up how everything going on on the island is Weird and Cass celebrates someone acknowledging it. Once again, bringing back the ‘ignorance is bliss until it’s not’ thing going on around here. Cardamon does more childish things this episode, making a wish and crying in his mother’s arms. He got to finally let go of his responsibilities and let it out until he passed out, and now he gets to sleep again. Moully and Bee are out of commission and the Wizard’s+Cooking Prince stay one the island/ship to be with Bee even though they are mostly confused about EVERYTHING going on rn. Bee has multiple Bees now while she’s out, and so, they go looking for Bee’s dad. I have a feeling he has at least some white hairs by now.

••••

I remember watching this season for the first time. I remember I definitely cried at multiple points, but I can’t exactly remember what points now. I didn’t cry this time, I was too busy taking everything in and trying to put what little pieces I could find together. The first season was to get us used to this world and get comfortable for a chill ride, but then it smacks you in the face with something much bigger at the very end. This season was to make you pay more attention and to question your surroundings. It was also about the first steps to taking charge of your life. If Bee didn’t do all the responsible things she did this season, the warlocks would have probably gotten Puppycat while the island went to shambles. Actions have consequences and that’s what this was about. I believe next season is why ‘Lazy in Space’ was the title. The characters are going to be in space, looking for Bee’s dad, and will acknowledge all the weird things going on while developing, excuse the pun, in out of this world ways. 

I can’t wait for season 3.

#bee and puppycat #bapc

[wheelbrough]

hmmm. my review that nobody asked for.

all in all. i think its safe to say. majorrrr disappointment on literally every single front. except like, robin and vickie i guess.

bloodbath? carnage? gonna sit and stare for a while after finishing? baby. none of that is true. actors are professional liars. everything that happened this season felt like a whole lotta nothing. the russia plotline dragged onnn and onnn and the cali gang were totally sidelined and stancy? in 2022? there goes steves arc. so many relationships juuuust down the drain.

i hate that its eddie who died. i liked eddie, yeah, but gaaaah i cant get OVER it if youre gonna go around saying its time to kill off some of the main cast just DO THE DAMN THING!!!! people have been waiting for steve to die since like season 1 man. kill him. commit to killing max. commit to killing hopper. kill nancy! jonathan! i dont care who just dont create another side character just to kill him. im pretty sure they split s4 into 2 volumes one for the money slash hype two it was a way to like. make people get attached to eddie. so him dying would feel like a main cast character dying. there were so many good opportunities to kill steve. i dont want steve to die, im just saying. PLUS eddies death is not mentioned at ALL after the fact with any of the gang, like ???? i get max is in the hospital but he was mike and lucas and dustins friend and everyone bonded with him youd think theyd show a little bit of mourning rather than just.ignoring it. focusing on max. ?????

and the wayyyy he died like they could have hopped back to hawkins and if the bats started to leave just fall in lure them back hop right out. eddie running to the bats makes no sense especially because as he was being killed the people he was trying to protect are being strangled by vines. so. completely pointless. this final battle was incredibly lame and his death was just so anticlimactic.

im upset abt byler bc, while i didnt think it would actually happen, i thought, idk, will would have some importance? mikes not that stupid. hes a dumb dumb idiot (affectionate) but he’s not blind and it really makes no sense to craft the byler narrative like this UNLESS theres an Actual Good Scene in s5 of will like coming out and mike being a good friend.

and like i get that steves relationship with dustin is special but come on he’s friends with the other kids too and that is just so consistently ignored. he and robin and nancy and jonathan know all these kids and have for a Long Time and its just always dustin with the older guys and. where is my steve and lucas or steve and max or robin and max or hell even robin and mike dynamic. they hang out i know they do. show it to us. and dont show us stancy. dont show us steve wanting six kids and an apple pie life with nancy of all people. like i get long time yearning, i am a big fan of that actually, but with stancy... especially the way their relationship ended!! you cant retcon that. nobody wants it.

quick side note too like steve was just... okay? after being choked twice and having his insides eaten? never mentioned again? theyre so weird with physical injuries. dustin got his stupid little limp but steve is never shown to be hospitalized or even checked out and his choking bruise rash is just. gone. after two days. yeah, no, i dont buy that. its just him being ignored and forgotten in the narrative.

AND  THEN we spend all season watching incredibly stretched out narratives with all the separate groups. and we dont even see them all together. only some of them. i get that season 5 is supposed to pick up immediately after (? it has to, right?) but where was that moment of everyone coming together with one piece of the puzzle to make things make sense. the different plotlines didnt connect. if youre gonna make the story focus on the plotlines and not the characters then at least try and make the plot cooler, you know? it just felt. weak. like marvel movies feel. oh goody another fucking monologue.

and now im just being nitpicky but eye personally am not a fan of the jokes abt hopper being skinnier slash not fat. i needed to lose weight or im not fat anymore (to el) or you shrunk like no shit he lost weight. he was in a RUSSIAN PRISON being fed moldy bread for EIGHT MONTHS. that just what this show needed. jokes abt starving making someone look better slash healthier. they dont outright say he looks better, i’ll give them that, but it is 1000% implied that its a good thing he lost weight, mostly brushing over the STARVING IN A RUSSIAN PRISON aspect of it.

and even more nitpicky the one good thing of robin and vickie? yay another skinny white girl. more skinny white lesbians. hoo ray. wheres that bechdel comic abt why dont they show anyone like us?

vecna looked stupid. there was too much for shock value. where was argyle in the last scene? abandoned in the woods? murray? like its full on 7 am right now and i am. i knew id be disappointed. i knew i would. and i am! this show has lived long enough to see itself become the villain.

however. mike is my baby. steve is my baby girl. i love robin and i love lucas and i love jonathan and argyle and joyce <3 and mike again hes really just my idiot baby boy i love the characters and i am looking forward to seeing the, frankly, much better alternatives other people come up with. duffers :( stop trying to outdo yourselves. you cant. you dont want to. sigh.

#mine #stranger things 4 #i am going to SLEEEP #that was so long #i havent read over this sorry. i dont care. #stranger things is feeling very. supernatural. #theres potential that will never be tapped into. #but we watch bc we must. and these characters sure are in situations.

[burneddownthegym]

When do you think Buffy and Spike started developing feelings for each other? I think for Spike it started in season 2 which has been kind of confirmed by Dru, but what about Buffy? Their relationship seemed to change after Spike let Glory torture him to protect Dawn, but I like to believe Buffy had unregistered feelings for Spike way earlier. I don’t know what’s true though. She let him live many times when she shouldn’t and that could just be the writers wanting to keep Spike but it could also be read as Buffy not wanting to kill him for some reason. If I were Buffy I would have at least been attracted to him from the start but I’m not Buffy. What do you think?

oh god. i started writing this and it just got more and more unhinged until i was left with a novel. but here’s my headcanon under the cut.

i think for spike it started in season 2, yeah. kind of immediately. i mean in his second episode he already has like ten tv’s mounted on the ceiling to obsessively watch buffy fight? ok weirdo. obviously the writers weren’t planning on spuffy at the time but it all fits with the dru retcon in “fool for love”. i think any feelings he had were super repressed in him for a while though, and were probably closer to obsession than anything (where does one draw the line between obsession and love? much to think about!!). tbh, and maybe this is controversial, i kind of think it’s not until “intervention” that he really understands just how in love with her he is, or what it really means to be in love with her. he definitely thinks he’s in love, he has a raging, identity-crisis crush, but i don’t know, something just feels different after that episode. i feel like it’s when his feelings for buffy really become less about him and more about her. like, less about having her or wanting her to recognize him, and more about wanting to be what she actually needs. less about *loving* buffy and more about loving *buffy*, maybe. so even though his feelings before then are real, they feel real in a different way to me after “intervention”.

buffy is harder. personally, i don’t think she was ever consciously attracted to spike until maybe s5. (buffy being immediately attracted to him in fic is actually a huge pet peeve for me; it doesn’t feel in character at all and can even make me stop reading). i think there was latent attraction, but spike was just so far outside the bounds of who she thought she would be attracted to that it doesn’t register that way (reason #34095 spuffy is a lesbian ship, obv. also it’s why her being attracted to him immediately can turn me off in fic, bc it makes the relationship feel less gay, and that’s kind of important to me). i think she finds him tacky and annoying and lame and just not a sexual object. he’s a soulless vampire and you don’t sexualize those. and so anything sexual she felt toward him she dismissed the way you might dismiss a weird sex dream about someone you’d never want in real life (jane espenson apparently had notes on her desk pre-s5 saying buffy had sex dreams about him, which i totally buy, especially after “something blue”). i think one of the reasons she freaks out so bad in “crush” is that suddenly spike isn’t in the non-sexualizable category anymore. like, what, vampires and slayers are sexualizing each other now? like in real life not just innuendo? you broke the rules, what am i supposed to do now? it’s why she’s so weirded out when he tries to kiss her in “fool for love” and goes on about how people can’t love without a soul in “crush”. spike isn’t fitting his sexual category and she doesn’t know how to deal with it so she tries to stuff him back in. long story short, i think it’s only after “crush” that she actually consciously thinks about his attractiveness, because before then he just wasn’t someone on the table for her to think about that way.

(oh i should also add—i think spike’s “crush” moment with buffy is “who are you?” when faith comes onto him. because it was sort of a similar thing for him. even though he was attracted to buffy before that episode, it was something he repressed or treated as kind of a game. innuendo and eroticism as a battle tactic but not something you’d actually follow through on in real life. but he thinks buffy breaks the rules in “who are you?” and suddenly makes herself real-life sexualizable. so i think his attraction becomes more conscious after that, even if he’s still trying to act like it’s something that disgusts him, like buffy post-“crush”.)

(also, this is why it’s so easy to read violence and murder as sublimated desire in a gay way with spuffy. it’s not really about murder and violence. it’s about them expressing romantic/erotic desire within the bounds of what their roles allow, because they can’t conceive of each other in other roles.)

but i do think buffy did still have some sort of draw to spike before s5. i feel like instinctually she saw him as more of a person than other vampires pretty early. definitely not consciously, and definitely wasn’t love. but she talks to him like he’s a really annoying guy more than she talks to him like some sort of mindless enemy. she doesn’t bother telling other soulless vampires that she violently dislikes them, or mock them about their breakups. i think the only other soulless vampires she sort of treats that way are harmony and holden in cwdp, which makes sense since both of those are vampires she knew before they were vamped. she didn’t kill harmony either, and wasn’t excited about having to kill holden. but spike is the only “stranger” vampire she sees that way, and i think that’s interesting! i think a lot of her conflict over him is due to this too, tbh. he instinctually feels like both a person and not-a-person to her, and that’s hard for her to process.

i have zero canon to back this up, but i think the first time buffy kind of sort of falls in love with spike is in “the gift”, when he says he’d protect dawn until the end of the world. i mainly think this because i don’t think it can be understated how important dawn is to buffy, or how telling it is that she kisses spike in “intervention”. other people have said this, but she just doesn’t kiss people every time they do something nice for her. i don’t think she would have done that unless she felt some sort of latent *something* for him, and unless he’d done something that really deeply affected her. him being willing to sacrifice himself for dawn’s sake, or protect her above all, affects buffy first: because of how self-sacrificing she is. she’s always the one who has to die or put herself on the line for other people. and second: she’s the only one who cares about dawn the way she does. no one else goes into a coma or threatens giles or vows to protect her until the end of the world…except spike.

so the fact that spike would understand the self-sacrificial and protecting-dawn parts of her, or help her with them in the same unthinkingly committed way, when no one else is, i think hits her where she lives. he understands and is not just supporting, but *embodying* this hugely important thing to her at the time when it counts the most. so she falls a bit in love with him. maybe just a second, or a minute, and then she ignores it and saves the world. but that’s the first time it happens.

then as far as s6 goes, i pretty much take buffy at her word when she says she has feelings for him, but that they’re not love. i think she has really intense and confusing emotions around him and for him, but they just don’t cohere into something that could be called something clear-cut like love. and that’s sort of the tragedy of that season? it has all the potential and intensity and chemistry for love, but she doesn’t like or trust herself and she doesn’t trust him, and he isn’t in a place where he can understand the guilt and self-hate she’s going through, or be moral without her guidance, and so in a lot of ways her lack of trust really is justified. so it just can’t quite reach the realness of love, where you want and want to care for the other person’s whole self. but (adding this edit based on a comment by marinxttes!), i totally agree that a lot of her breakup with spike is about her feeling enough for him that it doesn’t feel right to use him anymore. i think that’s the decisive moment when she stops being confused about whether he is or isn’t a person (and whether *she* is or isn’t), and decides he is one. maybe not one she thinks she can love yet, but one she genuinely cares about doing right by, and that’s a huge shift.

i believe her in s7 too when dawn asks if she loves him and she says she feels for him. i don’t know when exactly that whole mess starts cohering into something that really is love for buffy, but i feel like it’s happening the whole season. like air condensing into water. all the pieces have been there, amorphously, for a long time, and finally they’re allowed to take form. so when she says “i love you” in “chosen”, it’s at once something new, and also something that’s been there all along.

#ship: spuffy #do i have evidence to back up 90% of this? no #am i going to post it anyway? absolutely

[chasing-posts]

Miraculous Ladybug Vlog: Queen Banana

Season 4, episode 7

"Okay, time for another day of Miraculous Ladybug, which episode am I watching toda-AaAuGh NoOoOo Fuuuuuuuu-"

My reaction to knowing I have to watch this today. I heard about how bad this episode is. And now I'm the one who's about to go bananas.

Ugh... let's not waste time. This is another Astruc self insert storyline, so it's destined to be bad. The last time he wrote hinelf into the show he said people don't like directors, and allowed multiple racist remarks to go unchallenged. At least this time he managed to avoid the second part... but that might be due to the lack of Kagami than anything intentional.

Okay being too harsh on the guy but ... this is a really dumb premise for the episode. This top tier ANIMATED director, decides to do a small short film with a group of high schoolers, gives them no budget and let's them write their own movie and he's... actually not directing either. Nino's acting as director so he's...just advising how this goes... and they have one day to film, act and edit and everything else, and the movie was shown the next day.

Okay. So ASIDES from that not being how ANYTHING works, why couldn't this have been a film event? Why would he goto a middle school instead of a college or university? Why wouldn't this be more a volunteer class or extracurricular activity for the summer that some kids signed up for but not everyone? Why not make this last for the entirety of summer break, instead of 2-3 days and boom. That would also allow other kids who aren't Zoe, to show up and shine/ have kids who wouldn't normally work together in a group.

I'm lying of course, I know the reason; it's because that would take away from Zoe's and Marinette's screen time. And wouldn't give Astruc the chance to demonize Chloe some more. Also despite the title, this episode and Sole Crusher, work as a two part episode to introduce Zoey and reaffirm her as a recurring character, and Chloe's replacement.

Which is just...so bad for a multitude of reasons...just...SO many. To name a few off the top of my head:

Removes Chloe's redemption arc, which could be argued was one of the best parts of the show.

Zoey shouldn't have had enough time with Marinette to earn a Miraculous. Marinette usually only gives those to people she knows/trusts, and she trusts Zoey way too much for how little she knows her.

Lazy writing. Rather than go through the hard and interesting path of making Chloe a better person, or maybe more an antihero to keep things interesting, they just replace her with this shiny, new, flawless sister, who will just do everything Marinette says... which makes incredibly boring.

This is a bad message, one that says that if you did bad things in your past, you are a bad person and you can't improve. And someone better than you, will replace you and all your accomplishments, and make you look worthless.

On top of all that the episode is just badly written. It's trying so hard to demonize Chloe that it makes the rest of the class look like spineless losers. Only Marinette stands up to Chloe, when in the past everyone else had their breaking points with her and they could have just walked out like "screw this. Bye Queen B!" (And say that last part so mockingly that she knows they're not calling her "queen Bee.") All of this is a student production anyways and they own the props, costumes, and allhave camera phones. There's literally nothing Asteic could provide them in the final product outside the lighting gear, and since they filmed in the day/ Sun set, they might not need that anyways. It also has this weird obsession with bananas that Chloe has NEVER had before, and will never have again. This retcon the actual CANON method she calms herself down, which is by holding her yellow bear, Mr. Cuddly.

Furthermore, let's look at some of the horrible lines/ words that go on in this episode:

The Sentimenter's name is"Banana Boom Boom." Which might be the dumbest name of any villian/ sentimonster in this show.

Chloe calling Zoey "Banana Head" unironically...while wearing that shitty costume.

"How about facing someone your own size" Zoe says to an akuma 4 times her size... ugh...

Plague's little speech singing Zoe's praises... something he has NEVER done for any Miraculous holder. NOT EVEN LADYBUG. That felt so out of character for him I actually wanted him to shut up for the first time ever.

"I'm done playing the supporting roll for the sake of our family." GIRL YOU WEREN'T EVEN A ROLL AT ALL UNTIL FIVE MINUTES AGO!!! She literally just started existing yesterday.

Maybe this will help Chloe become a better person." SHUT. UP. You guys literally rewrote her character so she went back to being a one dimensional villian, and have made repeated, official statements that you have no interest in redeeming her. So shut up. No making false hope. Just say you hate her, embrace her villainy and move on!!!

And you know what, even as a villian Chloe no longer works because she no longer fights anyone. Has anyone else noticed that Chloe hasn't been a physical fight since the episode "Miraculer" in season 3? Before this Chloe her got her hands dirty as a superhero, and as a villian when she was akumatized. We learn in season 1 how she practiced all of Ladybug's moves when she played dress up with Sabrina, and then in season 2 we learn she is actually INCREBLY SKILLED when she tries out to be Ladybug for a music video with Adrian. Performing amazing acrobatics on her own, without any powers. Then as Queen bee she is the last to be taken down in the first version of Team Miraculous in season 2's finale, AND when she fights Mayura one on one in Miraculer, she almost defeats her ALONE. Bare in mind that Natalie can fight three supervillains ON HER OWN, unarmed, while they are corrupted by Hawkmoth, and this was before her health deteriorated so much!

Chloe is actually a bad ass! And season 3/ 4 is trying to portray her as a coward who never fights her own battles which is just not Chloe. Yes she does manipulate her father to get what she wants but when he's not around, she'll take matters into her own hands to get what she wants. It's one of her best and worst qualities at the same time.

And there's just so much more in this episode! Why Zoe SPECIFICALLY have to use the bee Miraculous? Ladybug got hit by an attack that should have turned her into a banana, but the show ignores it! Chat Noir made mistakes to make Vesperion look good. Adrian confronts Chloe about being a brat and not being friends, over a conversation they had TWO SEASONS ago, and has ignored all the other bad stuff she's done since then!

This episode is OBNOXIOUSLY awful, and if I were Astruc, I'd feel ashamed of myself for releasing this into the world. Let alone putting my self insert into the story.

This episode is just rediculous. Utterly... rediculous.

#Queen Banana #miraculous les aventures de ladybug et chat noir #miraculous ladybug #Chat Noir #marinette dupen chang #adrian agreste #zoe lee #chloe burgeois #queen bee #Vesperion #vlog #long ass rant #horrible shitty ass episode #a disgrace #-4/10 #that's right #NEGATIVE POINTS #ooc writing #god damn mary sues #be ashamed Astruc #WHERE THE HELL IS LILA #...chloe's hair looked great though. absolutely stunning

[loving-villanelle]

what do you think about laura's recent interview? 🤭 hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/killing-eve-season-4-villanelle-eve-arrest-therapy-1235110972/

I hate this entire passage right here. Let me tell you all the reasons why:

1. Eve arresting Villanelle is confirmed to be Eve simply getting Villanelle out of the way. "I don't want you around." Not real sure how it gets much clearer than that. While we have analyzed the crap out of Eve's decisions and have come up with our own more palatable reasons, it's hard to deny the true reason when it comes straight from the horse's mouth.

2. Laura thinks Eve should have locked Villanelle up back in season 1. THANKS I HATE IT. Literally the entire premise of the show has been about the instant connection between Eve and Villanelle and also the fact that they are both unwittingly being controlled by this entity that is foreign to them both. At the end of s1, they had an honest conversation where Villanelle opened up about how much she really did long for some sense of normalcy. Things that she wanted: "cool flat, fun job, someone to watch movies with." So for Laura to say "Well really this felt right because we think this is how it always should have been" completely disregards that connection between them and also essentially puts Eve in a position where she's telling Villanelle "You and I should have never happened." I'm also curious about the "is a world without Villanelle a world she wants to exist in?" Because haven't they been separated for a long time at this point? Eve has been existing in a world without Villanelle. And Villanelle was locked up for 5 minutes and it's been maybe a few days since? So in that amount of time she all of a sudden missed Villanelle? I'm just having trouble following the logic.

3. Laura says that this is the first time the show has explored Villanelle feeling like Eve doesn't need her. WRONG. I think the most simple requirement for being a show runner is you need to have watched the previous seasons of the show. Laura either hasn't or is once again doing a major retcon, because literally the entire first half of season 2 was Villanelle trying to come to grips with the fact that Eve seemed not to care about or need her anymore.

I also don't particularly care for this part. I'm not sure why they feel Eve needs to practice or act out certain things with a different "dangerous, intoxicating" woman, instead of just going directly to Villanelle. They keep talking up how Eve is so ready to take things on now and face challenges, etc, but she needs a practice run with her relationship with Villanelle? Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased that it seems this will eventually lead to some sort of movement on the Villaneve front, but I'm not sure why they felt this was the way to go about it.

Finally, not crazy about this passage either! I absolutely agree that love and power used to be one in the same to Villanelle, but this was addressed in season 3 when Villanelle surrendered that power by walking away. If that's not love, I don't know what is. So we're back to this one step forward, two steps back where they are just acting like certain developments never even occurred on the show. And the fact that they are implying that power and love are still one in the same for V makes me want to RAGE. What part of "I want to smell her skin" is power bound? Or "I want to hear all the boring things she does every day but to me they would be fascinating". They are giving Villanelle dialogue that very clearly shows that her feelings for Eve go beyond any power trip, yet in interviews they are saying Villanelle sees them as one in the same.

Now for the one part I did like! I'm ready for the fire!! But I'm also confused, because the episode description for ep 6 says that Villanelle refuses to make amends and leaves Eve.

So all in all, this interview just left me feeling very confused. I don't agree with most of Laura's takes on the characters and the dynamic of Villaneve. But I am curious to see where this all will go. I'm just trying not to get my hopes too much

#villaneve #killing eve spoilers