badwolfwho1

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Goretober day 5: body horror

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THE WHEEL OF TIME ↳ Season 3 ↳ Episode One

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BEST OF BTVS: Cordelia Chase — Season Two

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MASS EFFECT : LEGENDARY EDITION | Liara T'soni

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Raise Body Heat

This spell card art is radically different in every way from its original form in the card game proper, but that’s only to its benefit in my opinion. The change from having a random, entirely unrelated fiend type monster to putting an actual (if generic) dinosaur is a great start. I do genuinely like that this card is more what you would think of when you think dinosaurs/reptiles and raising their body temperature (i.e. sitting out in the sun), instead of whatever that fiend type monster is doing in the original card. Honestly, though? I think I just like this card because of how serene it looks. Just a dino chilling on a cliff above the water. What more could you want?

Rating: 8/10

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they should make a show about two brothers and another guy

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BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER | 5.03 "The Replacement"

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but actually genuinely why is the ant sad and leaving with a bindle

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HACKS (2021— ) S04E04, "I Love LA"

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Just Like Me FR

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DAES DAE'MAR | The Wheel of Time 2x7

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I really think Season 7 would have worked so much better if Kennedy was a Slayer from the start, not a Potential.

The show is already very clear that Kennedy is, narratively, the most important of the Potentials. She gets almost as much speaking time in Season 7 as all the other Potentials combined (as well as having far more speaking time and appearing in more episodes than Kendra ever did in Season 2).  She's the only one who has any meaningful connection to any other character in the show (except for, maybe, Amanda and Dawn).  The writing already positions her as the main voice of opposition to Buffy within the group -- she's already the one most likely to question what Buffy's doing and suggest she could do better -- so why not formalize that?  Put her on a more equal footing with Buffy to start with.  Make it credible that Kennedy really could take charge and ignore Buffy entirely. Make Kennedy the Slayer who was called when Buffy died at the end of "The Gift".  

Yes, I know that the official canon is that no Slayer was called when Buffy died for a second time because Faith was the "active" Slayer at this point, but I think it's important to note that that was only something the writers came up with between Season 5 and 6.  It didn't have to be that way: there's nothing at all in the show's lore to suggest it's canon before then, and in fact people in the show openly talk about Buffy's death possibly activating a new Slayer even after her first death in "Prophecy Girl". And even in Season 6, I don't think we're told definitively that a new Slayer wasn't called (and wouldn't a new Slayer explain why the Watcher's Council aren't around this season?).  If you look online, the writers were even being vague about Kendra's death calling a new Slayer during the Season 2/Season 3 gap: none of how this works was ever planned out in detail in advance.  More importantly, it's pretty central to the show's mythology that Buffy is "the" Slayer and "the" Chosen One, and it's honestly a pretty silly bit of worldbuilding to accidentally retcon that she was actually only the "real" Slayer for 12 episodes (or even for 56, if you further retcon that Willow's resurrection spell somehow made Buffy the unique active Slayer again).

The idea of Buffy's second death not calling a new Slayer was a mistake, in my opinion.  Yes, I get that they didn't want another Slayer showing up in Sunnydale in Season 6.  That wasn't part of the story that season was trying to tell.  But why would she have to?  The world's a big place, and until the last few episodes there's nothing particularly apocalyptic happening in Sunnydale that season.  Why couldn't you just have the new Slayer off somewhere else, minding her own business?  (In fact, if Faith is the only "active" Slayer, then not resurrecting Buffy means condemning the world to no new Slayer at all until Faith dies, which -- given where she is -- probably wouldn't happen for years if not decades.  It's much better, I think, for Buffy's friends to bring her back because they miss her than because the world objectively needs her to continue the Slayer line and the only other Slayer is serving time in prison for murder.)

And imagine how Season 7 plays out with Kennedy as a Slayer from the start.  The focus of a lot of the second half of the season is on Buffy teaching the Potentials how to fight, which is perfectly fine as a bit of symbolism and helps set up the events of “Chosen” but doesn't really make much sense in-universe.  Potentials just aren't meant to fight vampires. There's never been any indication in the show before this that that was a good idea.  "She alone can stand against the demons" and so on, not "she and a bunch of other people who don't have superpowers yet".  But make Kennedy a young Slayer -- one who's been prepared 'properly' by the Watchers' Council, taught to follow their rules and procedures, the way Kendra was, but who still lacks much practical experience -- and make the focus of the second half of the season be Buffy  (and Faith) trying to teach her what that means ... doesn't that work a lot better?

(And sure, I'd bring the rest of Potentials in a few episodes before “Chosen”, I'd still end the season the same way -- but we really didn't need to see quite as much of them, did we?  Let Robin and Kennedy be the big two new characters this season -- let them represent our links to the past and future of the Slayer line -- and don't let the show get overwhelmed by so many other new faces.)

Also, this would let my inner world-building-obsessed pedant stop asking how old Kennedy is meant to be, given that Season 3's “Helpless” establishes that every Slayer undergoes the Cruciamentum on their eighteenth birthday (something that can logically only happen if every Slayer is called at seventeen or younger).  Which is not at all a good reason in itself, but ... look, it does irritate me, I'd be lying if I said it didn't.  Why does this season include “Help”, an episode highlighting how weird it would be for any of the now adult cast to have a romantic relationship with a high school student, only to then pair WIllow off with a girl who -- by the established rules of the show's own world-building -- has to be younger than eighteen?  I mean, the answer is that the show largely pretends Kennedy is older than that, or doesn't address her age at all, but this does contradict what we're told in “Helpless”.

And it doesn't have to. There's an easy fix. I'm not saying that the show shouldn't have had Willow and Kennedy get together. I like Kennedy as a character. I just think she'd make a lot more sense -- both as a character in her own right, and in terms of her place in the broader narrative -- if she was a Slayer from the moment we met her.

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“Be curious about what you’re writing about” is not stock Common Writing Advice but it really, really should be. There are a lot of written works that fail due to the authors just being obviously incurious about what they are writing about.

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Ava & Deborah in HACKS 4x03 "What Happens in Vegas"