pendragonsclotpole

[pendragonsclotpole]

i’ve seen only two episodes of the summer i turned pretty, both from season three, and a bunch of online edits also from season three, but i lowkey adore the character of conrad fisher

i don’t care about the love triangle, i give no shits about who Belly ends up with (besides thinking she and jeremiah bring out the worst in each other in the two episodes i watched, but like if he makes you happy, you do you girl), i have no stakes in anyone’s storyline except maybe steven’s, i just firmly believe conrad fisher deserves better.

like conrad, GET OUT OF THERE, KEEP FINDING YOURSELF, DONT GET DEEPER INTO BELLY AND JER’S MESS, FORGET THEM ALL

[pendragonsclotpole]

my recent interest in dc media thanks to the new superman movie has reminded me of how beautiful grant gustin was as the flash when he had good writing and chemistry with the other leads.

his team ups with kara were so cute, and his team ups with oliver were the funniest. he was so good at those crossovers and in general, i swear the casting for those three and the entire cw arrowverse were so good. it’s a shame they never got called for the movies.

[pendragonsclotpole]

someone needs to write a dissertation on the amount of homoerotic scenes in early 2000s to mid-2010s tv shows with bad cgi and/or cheesy script dialogue

like what was it about that era of television that gave us so many male relationships with a questionable amount of subtext under the guise of friendship? like maybe i’m biased because i’m finding most of these shows popping up back in my life thanks to ao3’s epic tagging system and so the sample is influenced by the amount of slash fic on that site but then i remember that there’s a whole youtube channel that has a series called Are They Gay (Alex Avila, I love you) and so clearly it ain’t just me. i’m also not complaining, some of the fanfics, fanfic tropes, fanfic writers, fanfic pairings, and fanfic terminology that spawned from this era of television has had a profound impact on me or defined my life for the last like ten years. i am simply curious

was it the physical, emotional, and mental toll of having to write, film, and produce 23-24 forty-five minute episodes for at least 3 but usually 5+ seasons? because that’s like the only thing i can think of and i wish we had more of that era of television around today. like give me another show with eight actual episodes of plot and 16 episodes of filler where someone helps someone else put on some formal wear to go to a dance and then like someone’s little brother died or get’s caught in the crossfire and then the two best friends, usually male, sometimes female, gaze into each other’s eyes for really long amounts of time and swear to never ever betray each other before falling in love with someone else

[pendragonsclotpole]

i just read that james gunn’s dcu will be completely separate from matt reeves’ the batman series, and the more i think about that decision, the more i hope he sticks with it. i also wish he would NOT start with damian as robin (not because i don’t love damian’s character) but because i wish he would go back and start with an earlier robin. ideally dick grayson but i’d take jason or tim tbh. i feel like starting with jason and having a robin, a nightwing, a batman all together on the big screen would be so cool and jason’s storyline and relationship with dick and bruce could go very well on the big screen. alternatively, tim’s rise to the robin mantle after jason’s death and meeting a more jaded, grieving batman would be another cool introduction to all of the characters, especially if they adapt jason’s resurrection and damian’s eventual arrival. but honestly, here’s why i want a richard grayson storyline:

gunn’s been pretty clear that he doesn’t want to rehash scenes that we’ve already seen before countless times, particularly the strand of pearls falling to the ground as martha and thomas are killed in front of bruce. and i agree! those scenes already exist and they are so iconic in the iterations that have been done, that i don’t think we’d ever get the same effect if they were done again.

however, i think gunn has the opportunity to flip the entire narrative on his head. i’m imagining a movie that starts with a 32 year old bruce wayne, playing the part of a ditzy billionaire playboy by day and a secretly established vigilante by night. he’s already well known, he’s got connections with gotham PD, maybe jim gordon is not yet commissioner and batman is not quite the imposing figure that he is in the later lore. he’s down in the cave under the manor, close to the anniversary of his parents’ deaths, analyzing some old footage, and hoping desperately that he’ll be able to find new leads on their murderer. alfred comes down, he tip toes around the elephant in the room, asks him to come up for dinner, and then suggests that bruce go out again, not as a persona but to really have fun. alfred shows bruce a flyer of the circus arriving to town. maybe bruce already had a plan to check it out. maybe he was going to go as batman based on some rumors! but now he wants to stop alfred from worrying or getting too sad so close to this anniversary, so he agrees to go and asks alfred to buy the tickets, suggests that maybe they go together.

alfred is happy. he wants bruce to be happy too, and he is intrigued by the family of acrobats on one of the flyers he found. so they go to the circus, and they sit in the front row, and they think this will be another normal evening, maybe a little melancholy so close to the anniversary and with the visage of a happy family of three, maybe full of investigative leads but nothing remarkable.

and then in the first ten to fifteen minutes of the movie, bruce and alfred and the audience watch a family of three take the air, and only one survives.

the graysons go up flying, high into the air, first the father and then the mother, and the little boy is left high up on the platform awaiting his turn eagerly. yet as his mother and father swing from opposite sides to each other, uniting in the center, and letting their momentum carry them together towards their son, they fall.

they snap like a strand of pearls, and we don’t see the scene, but we see a single flash, hear the scream of a child, and we see bruce wayne’s face fall. he closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, he is in front of a child. the boy looks just like him. the boy could be him, scared and alone. he’s just watched his parents die.

bruce has no experience with children, but he understands. So he leans down and hugs the boy, and when the police officers and social workers arrive, he lets the boy go. He watches as they take the boy and place him in a car and he waves, and he thinks that will be the end of that, but two days later, on the police scanner he hears reports that a boy has run away from a group home. a boy wearing green shorts and a red t-shirt with black hair and blue eyes. a boy named richard grayson. bruce sets off into the night in search of him, and the title card flashes on the screen as the movie actually begins, Batman and Robin.

I’m not sure where i’d want gunn to go with his batman in a movie, but it would be so cool to get an entire movie focused on the early days of batman and the first robin i could see this movie spanning bruce and dick getting to know each other, then the reveal of batman, working to capture tony zucco across maybe six months to a year, and then launching officially as batman and robin.

i’m also torn between wanting an entire movie with dick grayson learning how to be robin, and then a sequel setting up the teen titans or having those early years be a quick montage of scenes and then focusing on a slightly older dick grayson as he joins the teen titans

like 1-2 movies of dick and bruce, first one introducing them, second one sowing the seeds of their eventual fight

dick grayson on the teen titans with a teen titans movie, starting with him as robin and then taking up the nightwing name only to then hear reports of a new robin by the end

1-2 movies of bruce and jason, first one jason taking up the mantle, dealing with a hurt richard grayson, second one with jason dying

1-2 movies of tim drake and the emergence of red hood, maybe damian introduction

like i know these movies could span at least a decade, and i know that we’ve already seen these storylines play out in animation, but marvel’s done so many more movies across like 17 YEARS and this could totally open the door for a full live action dcu that has a different vibe. and like even if they don’t adapt every robin, say we start with jason or tim given that supergirl is out next year, i think that would be so cool because a major part of batman is how many sidekicks/partnerships he’s had through the years!!

also i know all of this will never happen, but i can dream!!!

[pendragonsclotpole]

i haven’t seen superman yet, nor do i know if james gunn will link up with the batman movie verse with his dc universe, but i think i would die if robert pattinson’s bruce wayne, david corenswet’s clark kent, and nicholas hoult’s lex luthor interacted with each other on the big screen

like i would literally die

[pendragonsclotpole]

we were robbed of a ten episode, sixth season angsty, traumatic buddy comedy arc of arthur coming to terms with the fact that he can’t hate magic because merlin is magic

robbed

"I'm a sorcerer. I have magic. And I use it for you, Arthur."

Merlin & Arthur | 5.13 "The Diamond of the Day - Part 2"

[pendragonsclotpole]

this is so interesting because I didn’t actually consider these two to be synonymous at all. When I think of kryptonite, i think of something external that weakens me. so because im a clutz, doorways with small steps are my krypotnite. whereas my achilles heel would be my inability to make decisions quickly. it’s my intrinsic weakness

[pendragonsclotpole]

sam mocking dean for appreciating food will never sit right with me

[pendragonsclotpole]

pause. how many words?????? and it’s merthur with my fave side ships of gwen/lance and gwaine/percival??? and one-sided gwen/morgana

AND IM JUST FINDING IT NOW

The person who rewrote the entirety of bbc Merlin finished it on ao3 if you even care

[pendragonsclotpole]

every year after you turn 17 you get further away from being the age of the dancing queen and that’s my least favorite thing about growing up

[pendragonsclotpole]

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

[pendragonsclotpole]

Around three centuries after Arthur’s death, Merlin comes across Idirsholas again.

The castle has fared remarkably well. Better than Camelot, though Merlin supposes that makes sense. Idirsholas had been little more than ruins by the time of his youth, and there was no reason to pillage it further in the subsequent years. Its glory and significance, much like Merlin’s, faded away with the Old Religion.

It was nothing like Camelot—nothing like the never tarnished legend of her final King. Arthur Pendragon’s name was still spoken of with awe and wonder across the whole isle. It had angered Merlin at first, their audacity to speak of him. Arthur was gone. Nothing but time could bring him back. The more they spoke of him, the more his ghost lingered, haunting this world, and keeping him from life.

Eventually, after Guinevere’s death, after she lay cold and buried in the ground while Merlin yet looked young, his grief over her turned his reticence into hope. Perhaps if they spoke of Arthur enough, he would return, like one of those old gods, brought forth into being by chants and invocations. Think of Arthur, speak of Arthur, breathe life into Arthur.

Merlin tossed coins into the palms of bards, told tales of the great once king, destined to be again, and he convinced himself his motivations were entirely pure. Camelot needed Arthur. The kingdom was not long for this world. Guinevere had done her best. She had fortified the lands and ruled admirably. Yet she was not her late husband. She could not unite once enemies into allies under a common banner as Arthur once had, and without his guidance there was nothing that could stop the cold reality of the fate of Albion.

The lands were too fractured. Magic a dying ember. Merlin a relic of a time long gone. He’d sworn off of interfering some time after Gaius’ death. It was a decision made more out of bitterness than any nobility or humility. The absence of his mentor had left him with such a profound melancholy. He came to the conclusion that not even magic could stop fate in its tracks. Morgana’s alliance with the Angles and the Saxons proved that the threats to Camelot were not so much as a desperate move by opportunistic rivals as they were a forewarning of the conquest to come. Merlin had left the city in a coffin, ten years into the reign of Guinevere’s son, disguised as the old man of his youth. He’d heard of the fate of the city and people through letters first, and then traveled to see it in person afterwards, on his way to the funeral of Guinevere’s grandson and the marriage of his daughter to a petty king. The sight of Camelot torn to pieces, stripped away and sundered by each new band of conquerors had torn the breath from his lungs. He turned his back to the scene and fled.

But the destruction of time is inescapable. It all circles back. Merlin steps on the outskirts of the ruins of Idirsholas, and remembers the touch of Arthur’s fingers on his skin as the then prince tore a piece of his own shirt to wrap around Merlin’s first battle wound.

Three hundred years without Arthur, and Merlin still ached with the pain of his final battle wound. He no longer tossed coins into the hands of bards or worse, regaled the adventures of his youth to unknowing audiences. The tales had grown too tall and beyond belief. Merlin and Arthur were little more than caricatures and there was no longer any point in trying to fix it. The Great Dragon had said the legend of Arthur would live long in the minds of men, but he had not mentioned that it would be in the guise of a cheap immortality, for whatever remained of Arthur in the minds of men could not be called living and resembled more of an effigy of decomposing corpse than a true understanding of Arthur. No, this was Merlin’s punishment. This was his castigation for his arrogance. This was fate taking her vengeance.

Merlin, in Idirsholas, closes his eyes and curses the stupidity of his youth.

Arthur: If I need a servant in the next life…

Merlin: Don’t ask me.

I would serve you again, if only you stopped my waiting.

“Maybe in another universe, I would ask you to run away with me.”

“In any universe, I know the answer would be yes.”

For @thiamsxbitch

[pendragonsclotpole]

Merlin and Arthur falling asleep together in the first episode of season 5 is making me go feral. Sure, it could be because they're cold. It could be because they wanted to know if the other awoke. But they really didn't have to be back to back, Merlin's head in the crook of Arthur's arm. When Arthur put his hand over Merlin's mouth?? My heart slowed. I can't wait to finish the show so I can consume so much fanfiction about them living happy lives

[pendragonsclotpole]

my entire personality currently revolves around that one instagram reel that david corenswet and nicholas hoult filmed parodying the princess diaries’ makeover scene

like it’s just so perfect? the way nicholas mouths the words and his little gestures and facial expressions make me want to die

and david corenswet’s little perfect smile at the end of the reveal? i just want to like hug that man and stare at his face forever

it’s fucking unfair

[pendragonsclotpole]

OWEN WILSON as MOBIUS M. MOBIUS LOKI S01E01 “Glorious Purpose”

[pendragonsclotpole]

don’t forget spock’s radiant smile and “JIM” when he sees kirk. that’s classic housewife greets husband back from the warfront

on amok time again: they really did "spock experiences primal alien mating drive and murder fuck ritual," and didn't even play with "and this is an excuse to see our prim and proper mr spock get sensual with a lady!". like he expends ALL of his hot dominating fantasy uncontrollable lust rage energy ON KIRK. they wrote that and had ONE chance to make spock have any scandalous, carnal housewife jerk off material romance they wanted with any sexy space woman in the universe, and they chose kirk. when he does interact with a woman he throws a soup at her

[pendragonsclotpole]

i keep seeing the superman promo posts on instagram and like the lex luthor/superman tag on ao3 is going to explode with this new movie. i am ready, my popcorn is ready