#& feels like he needs to be useful maybe bc if he doesn’t have a narrative function why does he exist

[imaginesbymonika]

All I know is you can take me there (slide away) | Part 1

Hold me down all the world's asleep. I need you now you've knocked me off my feet. I dream of you and we talk of growing old, but you said please don't. Slide in, baby. Together, we'll fly. I've tried praying, but I don't know what you're saying to me.

Plot: Reader wants Joel. He's not getting the hint.

Pairing: Joel Miller x younger fem!reader

Warnings: mentions of everything that has happened, angst, fluff (bc i feel like we can all deserve that right now), longing, Joel is insecure about his age, age gap (Reader is in her late 20s), a fan fiction plot classic !!!

You had no idea what it was. But there was just something about Joel Miller you couldn’t figure out. And every single time you came close to pinpointing it down, the narrative once again slipped through your fingers like sand. You’d glance at him during the town meetings. Joel would linger by the doors, occasionally roll his eyes- at some point, they would inevitably anchor on you. Then he’d quickly turn his head. Sometimes you thought that maybe he does like you, on other days you reckoned he simply tolerated your presence. However, maybe both things to him were the same emotion. You’d never ask.

You like him. A lot, actually. Ragged demeanor and all. His sharp answers. Gray beard, scars, and demons. You like him. All of him.

Joel does too. But he also knows how the other men in Jackson feel about you. After all, it was one of the very first things Tommy for some reason said after introducing you two. „She’s our number one bachelorette.“, he declared, while putting a cigarette between his lips. The sound of the lighter cutting through the peaceful air:“ The women are all intimidated, the men all interested.“ If Joel ever had even a tiny bit of confidence that could have led him to ask you out, it evaporated at that very moment. He is an old man. God knows you would never be interested in that. But he didn’t ask God.

Ellie knows. She knows that you are interested and she also knows that he is interested. And while she’s unbelievably protective of Joel, she can’t help but adore you. She had no choice, after all, you granted her a piece of your garden to practice her farming skills on. You are thoughtful, nice, sweet, and more than gracious. It‘s everything Joel deserves. If only he could see that.

However, he was way too focused on how half the town's male population was after you. And the majority of them were young men. Handsome and muscular; who could offer you so much more than he ever could. So he automatically removed himself. Again, he never truly saw himself as your potential partner anyway. Although he really wanted to. Yet life isn’t fair. Especially not to him.

That is why he is only looking at you, standing next to a few of your girlfriends while soft music plays in the background. God, you’re gorgeous. It‘s one of those silly town gatherings. Joel is well aware that he doesn’t exactly have to be there. Yet, he really likes seeing you in clothes that aren’t ‚surviving an apocalypse-coded‘ (your own words). He sighs and looks down into his beer glass.

A few seconds later Ellie gently nudges him, and when he looks up again he notices how you’re making your way over to them…and God, you’re so pretty. The prettiest thing he has seen in decades. And perhaps you are a sign that God hasn’t entirely abandoned them.

“Hi.“, you say softly, a smile emerging on your lips.

„Hey.“, Joel replies, trying to smile back. Yet, it comes out more jagged than casual:“ Nice dress.“ Jesus, he’s terrible at this. He used to be so much more confident…cocky even. However, when you smile at his compliment something heavy lifts off his chest.

You scan his features while you wait. Patiently. For him to ask you to dance. You click your tongue, and observe how his eyes quickly meet yours. Joel rarely feels shy like this, but there’s just something in your stare; you’re waiting for something and he cannot figure out what it is.

Meanwhile, Ellie picked up on it the moment you walked over to them. She rolls her eyes before turning to look up at him with a ‚come on, ask her‘ expression on her face. But Joel isn’t paying her any attention. He‘s practically paralyzed. „Well.“, you say, crossing your arms:“ I‘m going to grab myself something to drink.“ A wave of insecurity washes over you. Did you imagine things again? Maybe he genuinely just wasn’t interested in you.

„I could grab you something.“, the words fled his lips before he thought about them.

„You- you would?“

„Sure, what do you want?“

„A wine, please.“

The minute they’re far enough away, Ellie gently hits his upper arm:“ Are you stupid?!“ She asks, the words coming out as mean as they were planned. Joel turns to look at her in disbelief:“ What?“ They reach the small bar and Joel grabs a bottle and a glass. Tommy was starting to become really cheap with these things.

„She‘s obviously waiting for you to ask her to dance.“

Joel nearly drops the bottle.

„Jesus.“, Ellie mutters, hands flying up to catch the empty air:“ You‘re old, but not that old. It’s so obvious, that even a blind person could’ve detected that you’re practically drooling over her. Just ask-.“ „I am not drooling?!“

Ellie rubs the bridge of her nose:“ Just- just go and ask her out before someone else does. Okay?“

And for a second, Joel merely stares at her before nodding:“ Okay, yeah.“

[erinravenseeker]

Just had a middle-of-the-night “ohhhh” moment as I just figured out that Kim Dokja needs the Fourth Wall not because of the scenarios but because it was essentially his survival mechanism for life.

Now I have only read the novel once so I could totally be forgetting stuff & way off-base but this is what I remember. Inane rambling under the cut, major spoilers included.

We know he’s generally antisocial, placing himself outside of society like a reader, and he internally smoothed over Sangah’s rough points even before the scenarios, making her into a ‘character’ (a caricature of herself) that fit into an archetype.

Dissociating from reality & viewing himself as a reader is his coping mechanism & “WoS coming to life” provides a convenient excuse to keep ignoring that fact.

This kind of ties in with an idea I’ve been forming about the Fourth Wall, which is that KDJ is fundamentally incapable of believing that “The Characters” (read: everyone) can experience growth as a result of his actions. He exists outside of the story, he is in the audience beyond the fourth wall, so he cannot affect the characters.

Hence the paradoxical nature of the Fourth Wall. For as long as he is a Reader, the Fourth Wall is maintained. And as long as the Fourth Wall is maintained, he will continue to be a Reader.

(Warning this is where it gets incoherent and messy.)

Kim Dokja fundamentally NEEDS the Fourth Wall to be maintained. Not just because of the OD stuff, but because it’s the way he’s learnt to cope with existing. It’s also why dying is so easy for him—we know he cannot deal with the guilt of making people he cares about suffer, but if he’s just a Reader, that means he can’t really have any meaningful impact on their lives, so it’s fine for him to just… disappear.

Kim Dokja is not actively suicidal, he’s just invested himself so far into the worldview of himself being a Reader that to him, his temporary deaths no longer register as dying. More like… stepping out of the theatre for a bit.

It gets complicated when we hit OD. Because then we realise the KDJ we’ve been accompanying is essentially a self-insert OC. So we can ascribe the way he thinks to OD, including all the coping mechanisms and self-distancing. But where OD manages to escape the narrative along with SP, at the same time the KimCom Crew escape the narrative, KDJ actually kind of… doubles down?

Like, OD does what any Reader does and learns from the book. When KDJ says “I, someone of no redeeming quality, could be loved by the others.” It’s not just him learning this lesson. It’s actually kind of the opposite. OD is Reading this lesson so he learns that he’s allowed to accept the mercy of SP & the 999 crew. So they escape the narrative.

KimCom also manages to escape the narrative but KDJ… can’t. He comes to the conclusion that he was actually backstage all along. But that means he’s still not ON stage. A Character can’t feel for the Script Writer or Director or Stage Manager. So he doubles down on his separation from them, stepping into that role. And then then KimCom comes banging on his door backstage because they’re not just characters, they’re the Actors now, and KDJ disappears because he can’t deal with that, because he fundamentally cannot exist on the same plane as them.

I think that’s why I’m hopeful at a post-epilogue ending. KDJ The Reader exists at essentially a higher tier than the people around him, and so he believes he cannot be loved in a way that has a lasting impact on them. But he DID spend years being affected by WoS, by Yoo Joonghyuk. If he becomes the Character, and them the Readers… maybe, just maybe, he can actually accept that love.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

man i saw this and i was gonna write a whole post abt how maybe the problem for these ppl isn’t that ed wasn’t punished enough (even tho that’s what they say) maybe it’s that it’s a poorly-executed redemption arc but they don’t know how to verbalize that.

and that would actually make sense bc ed doesn’t have a redemption arc in s2. bc the show does not think ed needs redeeming. even at his worst and most harmful to the people around him the show is deeply sympathetic towards him and gives us sooooo much screentime dedicated to showing us that everything ed does he only does bc he’s hurting. which doesn’t excuse any of what he does but it does shift the narrative framing away from an actual redemption arc, where a character needs to like, learn why the things they did were bad and try to make amends. but ed never needed to learn anything, he knew his actions were unacceptable and that’s why he did them. he was trying to be the most horrific monster he could be in hopes that someone would get sick of him and kill him.

so then i went looking for an old post i wrote abt redemption arcs to talk abt why ed’s s2 arc probably reads like a poorly-written redemption arc for ppl who are expecting an actual redemption arc and. i change my mind actually. because “is this character willing to accept that their behavior is harmful, to make amends for their past behavior if at all possible, and to try and become a better person?” yeah we see ed do all of that tho.

Accept Their Behavior Is Harmful: i mean aside from the fact that ed knew this the whole time, we also see ed talking to fang about how guilty he feels for how he treated the crew. but like this isn’t zuko slowly unlearning an entire lifetime of fire nation propaganda, ed doesn’t need a season(s)-long arc abt this. He Already Knows

Make Amends For Their Past Behavior: like literally the whole thing with getting pushed off the ship!! wearing a sack and a collar at the crew’s behest!! he’s very much trying to make amends!!!!!

Try To Become A Better Person: there’s a lot i could talk abt here but just on a surface level, he’s trying to quit his job where he attacks and steals from random innocent ppl for a living. like objectively that job does not make you a good person. and also that job makes him miserable and when his mental health is in the shitter sometimes he hurts other ppl in his efforts to hurt himself so like!!! he is very much trying to not be the kind of person who forces crew members to fight to the death anymore!!!!

so yeah, thinking this was abt a “poorly-written redemption arc” was giving these ppl too much benefit of the doubt lol they just want to see ed grovel and suffer for an entire season, which was never going to happen lmao. the show thought izzy had more to apologize for than ed and that’s why ed’s apology was one sentence and izzy’s apology was a whole speech on his deathbed. the show thought izzy needed more punishment for his actions than ed did and that’s we see izzy get put through the physical ringer in the beginning of s2 and ed getting beat to death by the crew happens off-screen. ppl can argue all they want abt how ed did so much worse than izzy but at the end of the day the show disagrees with those takes and that’s why it treats these characters the way it does. die mad about it.

[silverliing]

Mike’s wall art

I love seeing analysis about ST set design because it really spells out so much of the story without verbally telling you, and ive seen much discussion abt the details of mike’s room in s4 (that one way sign haunts me btw). buuut there are two pieces of visible wall art that I don’t really see get talked about on here (that i’ve read) and I just have a few things to say about them and what i think they might be telling us about Mike’s character and upcoming journey (hint: going into the UD)(hint: making plans and leading the party)(hint: byler)

so idk if this has been pointed out or if it’s common knowledge atp but the two pieces circled above are lithographs by artist MC Escher; Hand with Reflective Sphere (left)

and Relativity (right)

(a lil hard to see in this screenshot i’m sorry😢)

The artwork is beautiful as you can see (canon Mike Wheeler has great taste in art). Escher was most known for his intricate “impossible constructions” which are optical illusions of paradoxical space, he was also the inventor of the impossible cube:

this is some pretty cool nerdy, mathy stuff that I’d expect mike would be into, but looking at it from the context of his character and the direction of where the story is headed, there were 3 immediate possible readings that popped into my head which point toward 3 different (yet coexisting) directions:

He likes the art — It’s true, this art taps into Mike’s interests. Valid but boring. zzzz. snooze. You could argue that these posters should be taken at face value, but I just feel like in a show like ST —where the main cast knows of and is in various ways affected by an evil alternate dimension— having a character with wall art that references perspective/dimensional anomalies doesn’t really tell us much about his specific character or story. We’ve known that the ST set designers use a character’s space to show us who they are as people, these two artworks need to tell us something about Mike and his journey. And maybe Mike’s sensibilities about the world at large are shifting into nihilism with everything that’s happened in hawkins and the art reflects an absurdist outlook of future (teenage stuff, growing up, etc. etc.)

It foreshadows Mike’s s5 arc — I love this one. Mike is one of the few in the main cast who haven’t been in the upside down proper, so this art could reference not only that he’ll go into the UD in s5 but also that there could be dimensional anomalies involved in his travel or journey there. Perhaps this is how they’ll be able to find Max— by bending the laws of physics and using the mechanics of dimensional travel against itself, perhaps to open new doors or travel in different directions (hint: time travel 😏). And i think the reason this art is in Mike’s wall is bc it will be Mike who formulates the plan to find Max and retrieve her with the help of El and Will’s new powers 😏 (g*d knows i want to see leader Mike make a come back)(and Will with powers).

Will Byers — we know Mike and Will are tied together by the narrative and so I think these artworks could be directly pointing to Will with big red arrows. This point is corroborated by simply analyzing the formal qualities of the artwork, both individually and as a set. Hand with Reflective Sphere is about optics and perspective, about seeing, but also about the flattening of space. Relativity is about space, dimension, and paradox, but also about impossible perspective/vantage point. When read together the objective reading of them is about sight and space and paradox, about how the flattening of space helps us see something new and impossible. While Mike hasn’t experienced the dimensional travel into the UD proper, many of those closest to him atp had; El, Will, Nancy… but the reason i think these two posters remind him of Will specifically is because out of everyone else who has been in the UD, only Will experiences the feeling of being stuck there and of seeing into both dimensions at once; the stuck view-master, true sight. Mike associates these things combined (dimensional travel and dimensional sight/perception) with Will.

Also, Mike is a nerdy guy, he seems interested in this kind of stuff for the fun of it so he could’ve had sciency charts that reference the subject of visible light and paradoxes the way Suzie does, but instead he has not one but two fine-art pieces by a pretty big graphic artist that reference the subject of sight and space. Also, Idk what it is about the fact that it’s fine-art and not movie/game/dnd art that makes me also associate it with Will— the self-proclaimed visual artist of the show. The words are all jumbled up in my head rn but; artist. sight. all-encompassing. dimension. paradox. new perspective. -> -> -> -> Will Byers (is this a hint to wills powers??) etc. etc. etc. you get it

Secret 4th option (ties into #2)

Mike gets Vecnaed and this forces him into extensive self-reflection and the labyrinthian trials of finding himself and mastering his fears(maybe he’s already begun his self-searching and that’s why we see this art at the beginning of s4). cue cool musical montage of Mike navigating his own memories and mind-scape to find the answer that will make everything make sense while also hiding from vecna and buying the party time to find a way to end him.

[myfairkatiecat]

why'd you get so mad at that sophie/keefe sibling anon?

hope that doesn't seem rude

I didn’t mean to come off as mad or anything, sorry if the tone didn’t translate right! BUT! I did get a little frustrated, because this is something that people who ship non-canon ships rlly need to figure out.

And hello to you anon, and also to whatever anon send the original ask! Because considering the amount of anti-Sokeefe friends I have in this fandom, you totally might be one of my friends! Want to be clear—this isn’t because I have a problem with you not liking Sokeefe, the problem is with saying she saw him as a sibling in canon when she did NOT see him as a sibling in canon, because that has icky implications.

Since I don’t want to misrepresent anyone’s opinions, here’s the exact message:

Sophie never seemed romantically interested in Keefe, sorry

it was more like a little sister comforting her brother

That’s the part that bothered me, because that implies that in canon, the thoughts sophie has about Keefe seem more like a sister about a brother.

It’s one thing to read Percy Jackson and say, “wow, I just don’t really like a Percabeth ship :/” and that’s totally valid, like, ship whatever you want! Ship Annabeth with Piper if you’d like, or Percy with Jason or whatever!

But it’s another thing to say “Percy always saw Annabeth as a sister!!” 1) that’s a weird thing to say because they’re canonically together and so comparing them to siblings is really icky, and 2) if you actually read the books it’s very clear that he develops romantic feelings for her. Even if it’s not super prevalent in the first few books cause they start out as twelve.

So people who say Sophie never seemed to like Keefe until book 9 sound to me like if someone said Percy never liked Annabeth or considered her romantically until the kiss in battle of the labyrinth. Just because it wasn’t a focus of the narrative doesn’t mean it wasn’t there from the beginning—and it CLEARLY was!

It just sort of feels like a really icky reaction to not liking a ship to say they always acted like siblings when clearly that isn’t canon.

If you don’t like Sokeefe, maybe you can say you would have preferred it if Sophie saw Keefe as a brother. Maybe you can write fanfic where they’re just friends and have more of a sibling type relationship. But that isn’t canon and that’s FINE, you don’t have to be on board with everything in canon, but for the love of God not liking a ship doesn’t mean they were never interested in each other 😭

Especially cause the ask didn’t even say she saw him as a friend, it said she saw him as a sibling??? Hello??? That’s SUCH a weird thing to say about two people who are now canonically dating???

Like it wouldn’t really have bothered me if the anon said “I would have enjoyed kotlc more if Keefe was a brother to Sophie instead of a love interest.” Like, I definitely disagree, but I don’t care that much cause everyone can have their own opinions and enjoy whatever they like about the media or write whatever fanfic bc they don’t think canon did it right! You’re MORE than welcome to believe that Sophie and Keefe would have been a better dynamic IF they were siblings.

But don’t say that IN CANON Sophie treated Keefe like she was his sister, because considering the many specifically romantic thoughts she has regarding him, that is a really weird thing to say because it implies that people think that way about their siblings? And comment internally on how attractive they are? Like maybe even if the anon had used the word “friend” I wouldn’t have been as frustrated, though it’s definitely the case that if we’re looking at canon, Sophie has feelings for Keefe. They’ve kissed. They’re together. That’s canon. If canon isn’t your thing, read fanfic, but don’t outright deny what’s in canon in a way that has weird implications.

It’s almost like saying sophie never had a crush on fitz. It’s slightly different because she acknowledged that one more overtly beyond just commenting on how good he looked or how he made her feel, but it would still really frustrate me if someone said Sophie and Fitz had more of a sibling relationship in canon when clearly they had romantic feelings for each other. So like it has nothing to do even with the fact that I ship Sokeefe, I would get frustrated if it was about Sophitz too because you just can’t say that someone who has very clear romantic thoughts about someone always saw them as a sibling in canon

That has really weird implications??

Anyway. I know im not being super tactful but I do hope that anon sees this so they can understand what the problem was with the ask, which wasn’t that it was anti-Sokeefe. I’m super okay with someone not liking Sokeefe. Literally a bunch of my best friends in this fandom are anti-Sokeefe. One of them might even be the one who sent this ask, in which case, hey friend!! my advice to you is, if you want a sibling dynamic, go write some fanfic! But… don’t imply that “and she had to say, the beachy look really worked for him” is a normal thing to say about your brother, because it seriously is not.

Hope we can all continue to be friends! Again it’s not the anti-Sokeefe that bothers me, it’s the deliberate misrepresentation of canon in a way that has icky implications!!

Whoaaa that was long sorry

TLDR: Sophie has romantic thoughts about Keefe in canon, so saying that in canon they seemed like siblings is weird because that implies people normally have romantic thoughts about their siblings.

Have a great day :)

[shoot-i-messed-up]

please yap away abt the fic verse I love it sm <3 will Jill meet Jack and jim later on? Is Jack alive or is he dead alr?

YAY TYSM FOR ASKING <333333

Jill will meet Jack and Jim later on but most likely off screen or, like, not in the main fic. The reason is bc I’m only familiar with Jack from The Spectre (2001), and I’m only familiar with post-Johns Jim. So like. I think I have a very skewed perception of what those two are actually like, and I don’t want to write a character until I feel like I can accurately hear their voice when I write. (There will be a future Barry POV chapter and I genuinely feel like I’m on thin ice for that.)

Which is a shame because I knowww Jill would have Feelings TM about meeting these adult alternate versions of her brothers, and I could use that drama to get Jill to (uhh spoilers I guess lmao?) actually process that she chose not to go to her home universe, which means she probably won’t ever see her versions of Jack and Jim and Carol ever again.

And then Jack and Jim would both have feelings about seeing a young version of Hal. Like DILLH!Hal was the middle child, and he was the only girl, and he was somehow the only child who got physically abused by Martin. That’s a really interesting dynamic to me (I said, like a normal person).

I could get into the drama of how Jack was older than Hal, was “supposed” to “protect” him like big brothers should, and he actually was pretty hard on Hal himself as a kid. I imagine that he didn’t interfere because 1) he initially/partially bought into the narrative that Hal is being a troublemaker and should be punished 2) he was a kid and he couldn’t do anything about it 3) that helplessness turned into guilt once he got a little older and started to get the feeling it was wrong, and then that guilt turned into resentment towards Hal himself and 4) he didn’t want to jeopardize his own status in the family as the golden child. As Jack got older and processed all that shit while being estranged from Hal bc he fucked off to the USAF, I think he would’ve eventually reached out to Hal and apologized for all that. Or who knows? Maybe he’ll reach out during the timeline of DILLH, and we’ll get to see it onscreen. It’s kinda up in the air rn lmao. And anyway, if/when he does see Jill, who looks even younger and smaller than she did in his memory, he’ll feel even more guilt. yum <3

Meanwhile, I imagine DILLH!Jim would be like 6yo when Martin dies, and possibly he didn’t even know what happened until long after the fact. He was the baby of the family, after all. I think he would mostly be a little weirded out by seeing Jill as a girl because he mostly only saw Hal as a guy while he was growing up, since he’s so much younger and Hal transitioned fairly early on in life.

(And I have…absolutely no idea what Jessica Jordan would think about the abuse situation tbh. I’ve seen two characterizations of her: one where she’s sweet and genuinely loving towards Hal and another where she stifles his love for flying because she doesn’t want him to end up like Martin. My characterization for her in DILLH from Hal and Jill’s various comments has mostly implied the latter. And if Martin was beating up Jill, I can’t really steer towards the former much. If I give Martin’s abuse a more misogynistic bent, it might make sense if Jessica herself was abused by him. Idk. Thinking about it.)

I think I would have to do more research on how siblings of abused children experience that trauma, but those are my thoughts for now. PLUS I really need to figure out what are their canon characterizations because like, u gotta know the rules before u break them at least ykyk. I need to know the tune before I can riff off on it with my own reimaginings u get it u get it

On the subject of Jack dying, I am a huge wuss, and I don’t like killing characters (this will come up again Later). Jack died in The Spectre (2001) because Monsieur Stigmonus killed him and his wife in a car crash iirc in order to teach Helen Jordan some sort of lesson. In the DILLH universe, Hal won’t become Parallax and therefore will never become the Spectre either, so even if Helen is still cosmically special, Monsieur Stigmonus would probably not go to such extremes to teach her that the world sucks or whatever. I actually imagine Helen and Jill could actually be around the same age? Would need to do a little math on that, but that could be so, so fun. Cousins <333

(Just remembered. Helen will technically show up in DILLH but not in the way you think.)

[opheliasam]

4.16 is literally the craziest most insane episode ever . Dean goes to heaven n sees sam for who he is via his memories (assumes this must bc sam hates him despite sam having done nothing to imply that… like these were his happiest memories.. sorry his happiest moments weren’t about u or john oh my what a transgression???? like what . maybe it’s not about u or john it’s just about sam . It’s not a reflection of what he feels about you just about what makes him happy) and after seeing . Sam for who he is . he resents him bc sam does not feel all warm n cosy about home but the thing is . That’s not his fault and no one is saying that it’s dean’s fault . he just assumes that this means sam hates me and sees me at fault and resents me which makes him in turn resent sam . For being different than the way dean saw him . Which is actually so fucking crazy it makes my stomach churn—peak toxicity … and dean throws the samulet away bc his baby brother isn’t baby brother-ing and he can’t stand that. He does not like who sam is outside of his little brother—sammy. He does not like sam—the person. And so the only way he can reconcile staying with sam is by getting him to BE not sam but sammy. But samny is just baby brother—endlessly enamoured and dependent on dean, all heart eyes and hero worship. But what this means for sam is that he has to cede aspects of his personhood and autonomy away until he becomes what dean wants him to be—because that’s the only way dean can love him without resenting him. He makes himself smaller and smaller to fit into the role that dean sees him as, and it is such a small space—and sam doesn’t want to be sammy. He doesn’t, he wants to be sam but time and again the narrative punishes him for attempting to be sam until he can’t trust himself anymore and turns to dean (stone number one) and dean betrays, and lies and manipulates and changes the rules all the time, but dean can’t be wrong, right? he did it all for a reason (some reason) So . So it must mean that sam is at fault even though he had no way of knowing when the rules change or why they do.. he just knows that he doesn’t know anything, and that he’s a mess and that he needs dean and dean protects him. (this is what he believes he knows but we know that is not objective reality—prolonged abuse leads to him rationalising and even revising history just so it can portray dean in the best possible light, despite it not being the objective truth.) Because that’s the only way sam can make sense of anything.

(I’m using the rhetoric sam employs in order to make sense of the things happening to him, and the deep seated denial of his victimhood.)

Because otherwise it would mean something that it cannot possibly mean—that dean loves him but he’s also tried to kill him multiple times over and he’s violent and he doesn’t like that sam is vegan or likes smoothies or books and he doesn’t like when sam talks back or tries to question a decision and he is so angry all the time and sam is so so scared of him . But it can’t mean that . It cannot. Because that makes dean an ab—so it must be sam. It must—has to be sam’s fault, it has to be because he deserves it and sam just has to try harder at being good so that he can absolve himself. He’s not a victim. He can’t be .. he can’t be , he wants this . He does he does. He. He has to.

[goldensunset]

Fun fact about N’s character theme: it’s based on prime numbers! I don’t know enough about music theory to tell you exactly how, but it’s neat that the composer took his mathematical affinity into account -moon

ya!!!! that’s what i was talking about w the arpeggios. that’s a detail i think is great fs….

don’t get me wrong it wouldn’t surprise me at all if n’s battle theme was some masterpiece of musical composition on a purely technical level that i don’t get because i don’t understand complex math and music theory terms. i tried researching the meanings behind his name and just exploded. i mean look at this. i do not go there

like i’m sure they were absolutely cooking something intentional. it’s all so nerdy. i trust they made their choices for a reason. but i still disagree with them

i guess what i was getting at is that like extra flavor details in the music like this are great but what’s underneath really matters too… the main melody plays the biggest role in storytelling here. in a critical plot moment you should be able to listen to a track and just Feel a certain emotion and get an impression of what the character is like or what the situation is like. is it happy, sad, fearful, determined? unsettling? does it actually distinctly lack a melody, and what does that say about it? like without having to study details like this behind the scenes.. you shouldn’t need a phd the song should just hit you y’know

like it doesn’t exist within a vacuum it exists in the context of ‘i’m fighting this guy who by now i know means well and has been lied to and is in denial at this point, in the hopes that he backs down from trying to change the world for the worse and admits he was wrong, so that we can please be friends’ i understand n is an unusual sort of person and that formulas and calculations are part of his character quirks. but also at his core he’s not a machine or something he’s a human being with a lot of feelings and beliefs. that’s like. a really important part of the narrative… ik he suppresses his thoughts a lot but like

ig i just would’ve expected more of that passion in him to come out during his decisive battle. you would not have to change that much about it to satisfy my conditions. like his standard battle theme works fine for him when he’s battling you just to like test and study you in a calculating sort of sense but in the endgame you’d expect it to be more dramatic. which is why i love the pokemas version where it gets fused with his castle theme it sounds absolutely perfect like that’s the n theme we needed

the like. main part of n’s battle theme like the melody part… it is full of dissonant intervals. again who knows there might be a numerical thing to it that i’m unaware of but y’know like those are the sounds that make you distinctly uncomfortable. that composers use to signify fear or evil. i once woke up in a feverish mini-panic bc that song made its way into my dreams. (and that actually made me appreciate it more not less. lol. if you strike fear into my heart that’s a compliment). and i know he is an antagonist and you should be at least a little bit afraid of him but see like that’s the kinda thing they did for like. ghetsis. the pure evil dude of all time whose name is actually music-related too. the man is so evil he got named after his own evil music. ok king

basically n my man he deserves more to his battle music than sounding scary and cold

buuuut i guess you could say that’s what his encounter theme is for. ‘prisoner to a formula’ has a distinct melody (although that song is creepy lol). and then in b2w2 it gets remixed into a major key and it’s now called ‘n’s theme’ so like yay for once mr natural harmonia has a memorable theme that sounds like he gets sunlight and fresh air and that’s definitively considered to be his character theme!! yay!!!!!

idk. maybe this is all supposed to represent how he suppresses everything he feels and withdraws into his shell and his mechanical obsessive habits while he’s battling. bc his heart is distinctively not in it it’s not true to who he is as a character and also he’s in denial and trying to talk a big scary game the whole time. like the music represents his outer self not his inner self which is imo not ideal for a decisive character battle. and especially not given that his battle theme is at its core basically the same in the sequel even after he’s undergone character growth they bothered to make a remix but still didn’t add heart to it. as if they still wanted your impression of him to be offputting. but who knows!

[vamos-chilli]

My god people are so miserable in your tags, trying to find a problem everywhere . And btw haven’t you guys wondered that the vibe was maybe just a bit “off” because Carlos was just probably disappointed that he didn’t win that’s it, no need to insult or blame Charles when he did nothing. He won his race beautifully, so no need to be bitter. Some Carlos fans are being really annoying lately sorry

im ngl i dont even think the vibe was weird charles went to celebrate w whoever was collecting the constructors trophy i can’t remember and both of them gave carlos a spray before carlos went to spray max and they chatted before they left the podium like it wasn’t weird to me

but the main thing is people are always going to be like this in fandom . it’s a form of parasocialism in believing that we as viewers can understand the inner workings of our idols from ‘knowing them’ through the screen and coming to ‘recognise’ what we see as behavioural markers . happens all the time that’s why we end up with prominent shipping and rpf cultures in a lot of fanbases bc of our interpretation of how people interact with one another .

it can become obsessive for people, the majority of fandoms i’ve been in have been centred around real people and the subject of ‘truthing’ comes up a lot- the strict determination of a trait or personality of a person based on a second hand perspective of them, where the f in rpf is made redundant and people start to genuinely believe their headcanons of a person are applicable to their real life person . larry stylinson is knocking at the door .

because of parasocial and truthing behaviours peoples perception of drivers becomes tilted on what will best fit the subconscious narrative they are building- lando for instance i believe doesn’t deserve the mass hatred of mischaracterising as an awful person he’s been getting this season. nothing has changed between this season and the last except for the number of wins under his belt .

last year people felt the same hostility towards max . a few years ago it was lewis . its the relationship to our drivers as a competitor that’s changed . and those that pose a bigger threat receive the harsher penalties to their character .

it’s not an issue with carlos fans . it’s not an issue with lando fans or max fans or charles fans or anyone . it’s an issue of parasocialism that’s prevalent in every fandom for every character ever . we see it more for these drivers because they are top 5 drivers and they have larger fan bases . none of us are the big bad .

sometimes it feels like us vs them and i’ll tell you first i felt that way at the start of the season because genuinely i was being flooded with carlos hate in my asks and people posting the most insane negatively parasocial conspiracy theories about carlos having paid out the media to talk about him as if he didn’t just win a grand prix 2 weeks after surgery and be one of the most valuable drivers on the market for 2025 (i still get heated about that bc it was just plain disrespectful) . and yeah it did feel like it was carlos fans vs the lecfosi . because sometimes we let it be .

we build these insanely negative parasocial relationships with drivers and it consumes us. i’ve had to block ferrari fans for constantly posting carlos negativity and no doubt charles fans have had to block some carlos fans for constant driver negativity. lando fans will have gotten death threats over a race result even though that’s an insane thing to do and so have oscar fans .

everyone is annoying all the time we all annoy each other with our parasocial truthing of drivers personalities and the only way it’s actually going to change is if

1) we all take a step back to analyse our own behaviours and how we engage with negative parasocial behaviour

2) we stop making call out posts of ‘x drivers fans are so annoying’ because all it’s doing is reinforcing the narrative we want to build

[horsetailcurlers2]

nobody cares but i finally watched all of scandal and have now seen the full trifecta of TGIT shonda shows so here are my thoughts:

-it’s very interesting to me now having watched all three of the main OG shondaland shows just noticing all of the parallels and similarities between shows. obviously they’re all their own things with their own unique writers rooms and casts, but i think there’s definite thematic parallels and even just a familiarity to all of the dialogue. like how siblings have similar speech patterns.

-it’s also fun (for me especially because i watch so much fucking television and i love going on imdb) trying to spot all of the actors that have been in other shonda shows. (there’s also a surprising amount of crossover between shondaland actors and mad men actors)

-i really really liked olivia pope for the first four seasons. seasons 5-7 were rough. but i have to give shonda props bc i do love screwy and morally flawed female characters. although i have to say i think annalise keating from HTGAWM was much more compelling and had a better and more coherent story. she’s prob my fave of the three main shonda ladies.

-i got a little sick of B613. i gave it a chance when i thought it would just be maybe a season arc (even though i liked it better with the history they’d first established about it in “spies like us”) but oh my god it just got so fucking exhausting and ridiculous. the case of the week format was much better and more interesting than the B613 show.

-this is more specific than any of my other thoughts so far but i can’t stop thinking about in season 5 episode 12 when liz north tells david “down boy” and he immediately gets on all fours thinking it’s a sex thing.

-i hated fitz less by the end than i did in the beginning but i still don’t care for him. they couldn’t make me care about olitz at all. that relationship was more tiresome than merder to me.

-MELLIE MY LOVE. my darling. my president. bellamy young is fucking dynamite.

-i’m abby whelan’s number one defender im sorry. i TRY my best not to put too much stock in other people’s opinions of shows before i watch them but i’d seen some stuff online about a lot of people hating abby so i was nervous as i progressed through the show. but i still loved her by the end. i think it’s interesting how in a show of people who all do horrible fucked up shit, people hold all of the characters to such wildly different standards. i wonder if people were less willing to forgive abby because they found her “annoying”. fortunately that trick doesn’t work on me because i think annoying women are sexy.

-abby and olivia’s relationship was so beautifully complex and flawed and interesting to me. i think that dynamic is very underrated and unexplored. it reminded me in some small ways of annalise and bonnie’s relationship in HTGAWM.

-david rosen did not need to die. not narratively. not logistically. killing off an original character in the finale of a show honestly feels like a really shitty thing to do.

-i think that cyrus should have died. not even just personally i just think that would have been the best way to wrap up his story. i really thought he was going to have another heart attack by the end of the show.

-susan ross was maybe the only truly good person on the show and she deserved better than she got

[bestworstcase]

@sailorb00 tags here

#i was also on the fence about the EA siblings and Theodore being related by looks alone (#... and the alice + dorothy comparison#mostly chalked it up to coincidence but now that they're conf. to be from Vacuo it's looking less like coincidence fsdf#then is the girl on the desk photograph Alyx before she and Lewis found the EA?#And Theodore juat inherited it? He grew up on his great-great grandfather/uncle/who know's stories about the EA being real?#Maybe in hopes that one day his sister would return and be welcomed by family? even if they're generations apart#if Lewis's pseudonym is Theodore Im gonna lose it#I mean we dont know his or the EA siblings' surnames.#IS THAT WHY THEODORE DOESNT GO BY HIS SURNAME#BC OF THE FAMILY LEGACY???#ok imma go sit down now before i hurt myself w/ speculation fsdf

YEAH SAME on the being like Doubt.jpg about a relation between theodore and lewis on the basis of… skin color, basically, but the minute i heard “i couldn’t believe they were from vacuo,” that’s a deliberate choice to link these kids to the setting for the next major story arc, and that’s happening in conjunction with several developments in the 9.11 animatic that suggest history is about to become very important (soaring popular support for the crown—probable mountain glenn history-repeating-itself theme with salem razing vale—oscar mentioning vacuo’s history of colonization—plus the great war having ended with ozma’s use of the sword in vacuo).

it’s very. raises eyebrow. alrighty then!

so whatever lewis did after coming home, other than writing tgwfttw, probably has some narrative relevance—might be as small as something jaune needs to find closure, or it might be bigger than that, who knows, but if it was a hundred and fifty years ago and it matters enough to be in the story, then the story needs a vehicle to deliver this information in a manner that feels naturalistic and non-arbitrary. (jaune-stumbles-across-loved-one’s-memorial-statue-by-chance once is a believable happenstance; twice, a cheap contrivance.)

the simplest way to do that is to introduce a vacuan character with some connection to lewis, and the obvious choice there is a descendent, because lewis lived a long enough time ago that family lineage is kind of the only plausible reason for a living character in the present to have a meaningful personal connection to lewis.

(and it can’t be oz, because oz had no idea the ever after existed.)

this descendent-character also ideally should be prominent enough in the story to matter for reasons unrelated to their relation to lewis, to avoid feeling shoehorned in. and they are probably human, given the apparent rarity of interracial human/faunus couples.

that pretty much narrows it down to theodore, or the asturias twins. NOW hysterical as it would be for jax and gillian to be descended from lewis, finn asturias is obsessed with “the old stories about [his] family” and yet doesn’t drop even a single hint about the ever after, so i think we can rule that out.

which leaves theodore. hmm.

that picture in his office:

She still remembered that her attention had been drawn to one photo in particular: a black-and-white picture of a young girl in pigtails and a checkered dress with a small black dog. She hadn’t mustered the courage to ask who she was to Theodore. A daughter? A sister? Whoever she was, Velvet could see the resemblance.

plainly evokes dorothy, and even bearing in mind that there may be discrepancies (theodore is described as blue-eyed in the book but has brown eyes in beyond, for example)… there’s nothing in this photo to suggest a resemblance to alyx beyond ‘young girl.’ alyx doesn’t wear her hair in pigtails, nor does she have checkered patterns anywhere in her design, nor does she have a little black dog. so i doubt it’s her.

but black-and-white does suggest it’s old. ‘sister’ seems a lot more plausible than ‘daughter’ for that reason, and ‘mother or aunt’ even more likely than either of those.

(the other thing about a young girl with a small black dog in This story, is.

it’s a symbol for the deaths of the ozlem girls and the inescapable grief that underlies the whole conflict between ozma and salem—there’s a reason she sends a giant monstrous hound to capture oz and then huddles in the shadows miserably looking at conjured images of her daughters until oscar wakes up; the black dog reappears as this terrifying monster in conjunction with the surfacing of all this pain.

so the question is to what extent this small black dog in the photograph is Just Toto, and whether the specific narrative symbolism is or isn’t in play here; Did This Girl Die? that would preclude her being theodore’s mother but she could well be an aunt or great-aunt.)

of course the point of drawing attention to this photograph might be as simple as hinting at theodore’s quote-unquote real ozian allusion; not dorothy but the silver shoes lost in the desert. which is an interesting angle to consider with regard to this possibility of lewis being his ancestor, because on the one hand there’s the silver shoes carrying dorothy home yet becoming irretrievably lost themselves in doing so, and on the other there’s alyx, the white rabbit, guiding people home yet never able to return home herself. see the rhyme?

in a sense jaune and team rwby bring alyx home with them, in that they know what happened to her and if there are descendants of lewis still living in vacuo then the question of why she never came home can finally be answered. and if the descendent is theodore, then the intertextual confluence between him and alyx is more resonant than the surface dorothy-and-alice comparison; the silver shoes are the home the white rabbit returns to, as a memory, a hundred and fifty-odd years late. and it matters.

but also i have a little hamster wheel churning at all times in the back of my mind and right now it’s churning around: sixty, seventy years before the great war began, vacuo was a colonial territory of mistral—before the great war, it had no formal government, it wasn’t a state, and oscar references the history of colonization in the 9.11 animatic. so that history and the history of the great war—which was for vacuo a war for independence—is narratively salient. lewis was a child who grew up in vacuo during the fractious decades preceding the great war; he gives a face to this period in history.

and jaune told lewis and alyx not only that he was from remnant but that he was from more than a century in their future; he and lewis “compared notes on remnant.” jaune couldn’t believe they were from vacuo, “back before the war, before huntsmen.”

they compared notes.

jaune’s grandfather fought in the great war.

so lewis went back home to colonial vacuo fifty, sixty, seventy years before the great war knowing that the great war was going to happen. knowing that within his lifetime vacuo would fight for its independence and win. knowing that there would be peace in the end. according to what blake says in 9.2, in the book, alyx “didn’t know [afteran] customs and started a war between the townsfolk” and that takes on a really different subtext now that we know the story’s author was a man who grew up in colonial vacuo knowing that the great war was coming.

either lewis and alyx were vacuan, or they were mistrali but born in vacuo; either way the tenor of the girl who fell through the world suggests that lewis’ sympathies lay with vacuo. both options stand to be compelling if he acted upon this knowledge more directly than writing anti-colonial themes into his children’s book. or books. there is also the boy who fell from the sky, mentioned in after the fall, and alice’s adventures in wonderland does have a somewhat lesser-known sequel.

i doubt lewis fought in the great war himself—he was probably in his seventies or older by then—but if he had children they would have been of an age to fight for vacuo, and if lewis had passed down to them the stories he knew of what remnant would be like after…

y’see how lewis could have ended up playing a really important role in vacuo’s side of the great war, if he’d decided not to leave matters in the hands of fate? jaune told him about what the world would be like after the great war, but lewis also figured out that jaune knew more than he let on, figured out that jaune remembered a story lewis hadn’t written down yet. he knew that knowledge of the future could shape the future, because if it hadn’t been for jaune and jaune’s foreknowledge of his book, he might not have written it the way he did, as a guide for how to get out of the ever after.

so he goes home, knowing the great war will happen and what the outcome will be—or else knowing that it might happen that way. who did he become with that knowledge? what did he choose to do with what he knew? the one thing we know is he became a storyteller, and “storytellers have great power” is a prominent narrative theme.

salem inspired the world to rebel against the brothers by telling the story of what they had done to her, and speaking of her vision of a time when humanity could be free.

lewis…?

[atopvisenyashill]

apologies if this comes off wrong, but I really did hate the way they made rhaenyra's grief(of losing her mother) about alicent in a way by having her be forced to meet the king, like couldn't they have waited atleast a day or smthg. They really didn't explore her trauma and the neglect, that she obviously faced by viserys that a large part of the fandom need to be explained to that viserys was a shitty father to her as well

also the narrative is always making viserys seem he didn't do none of that. Like this man cut open his first wife and abused the second till he was unable to. If they wanted him to be one of the good guys, they needn't have made him do that?

Sorry for the rant lol

ya so i think there’s three types of issues with hotd - there’s “not attached to canon” issues (shout out sara hess), there’s “not enough time” issues (hbo i will hunt your ceo for sport), and then there’s “sure do have some weird social opinions in that writers room huh” and i think that rhaenyra suffers a LOT from the “not enough time” issue but especially in season one (whereas alicent suffers from that - in part - in s2 but is more or less solid in s1).

there’s imo this continued issue with rhaenyra being so involved with plot she doesn’t get character moments to flesh her out. millie imo has the stronger writing but it’s still a BIG ass problem because it’s like - i just don’t think the audience at large realizes a) how much she’s grieving, stressed, overstimulated, and not thinking clearly during the millie years and b) the same way that alicent takes her anger at being forced to be a child bride out on rhaenyra bc she can’t take it out on otto & viserys, rhaenyra very much takes her anger at how she’s being dicked around bc of the succession out on alicent because she can’t take it out on viserys. and in the same vein as aliotto, nyra can’t take that anger out on viserys bc like - she loves him. he’s the patriarch. he chose her to carry on the family, and the throne becomes synonymous with viserys’ love so she can’t ever give it up because giving up would mean admitting that maybe viserys set her up for failure.

now EYE feel like this is really clear but it obviously ISNT as clear as it should be because even discounting the absolutely stupid & disingenuous way people will, for example, frame her “pushing out heirs” line, i think because she isn’t allowed to really SIT in her fear of dying in childbirth and her grief over aemma and the way her grief can never resolve itself because that means admitting viserys is a jag off, people just gloss over it and miss it when it is a huge driving force (arguably thee driving force) of her character and her actions.

which gets into the viserys writing. i’ve said it before i’ll say it again. i think he’s the best written character in the show, i think he’s the best adapted character from the book, but viserys is so well written and fleshed out and now he’s dead and a lot of the other characters are painfully underwritten. so was that screen time well used???? feels like maybe not!!!! it’s nice that they really got that core of viserys is that he murders his wife & regrets it forever & that’s why he is the way he is wrt the succession but well, rhaenyra is the co-lead of the dance, not viserys, and we should have seen more that rhaenyra’s trauma over her mother is also a driving force of HER actions as a young girl/young woman over her father who they knew was going to die a quarter of the way through the story.

and then you get to alicent. alicent in s1 js very well written (up until the fucking prophecy) & comes across clearly because she has the time to have the plot heavy AND character scenes. now i think, as the other co-lead, that’s important. but it’s also like. well. alicent doesn’t have very much choice when it comes to marrying viserys and viserys is very much the one with the most responsibility here. i think cutting the scene where rhaenyra calls alicent a whore was good bc even tho it’s very in character (and juicy as hell), i don’t think it gets across the core issue here - which is that, regardless of alicent’s feelings on the matter, aemma JUST DIED & nyra's dad is remarrying her best friend. that’s an insane situation to be dealing with and rhaenyra is right to be so peeved. and it’s like you say - she talks derisively about the way aemma is treated but always stops short of blaming viserys. not only is her father shacking up with her fucking best friend, but her father essentially turns alicent into rhaenyra’s worst nightmare (“made to push out heirs” for an old man who CLEARLY doesn’t love her). rhaenyra just has to live with it; she can't escape it, she can't stop it, she can't ignore it. i just don’t think they gave nyra the room to really show US how badly this is affecting her (whereas we get alicent picking at her fingers, the whole sequence where viserys calls her to his bed at night, scenes where she’s holding aegon & looking miserable, viserys just out and out negging her in public). rhaenyra just runs around too much, her character has no room to breathe, and that is to me the main issue with her writing - if what drives her character is kind of opaque because they never give her a minute to stew in it onscreen, well maybe they're not doing too good of a job getting her across now are they!

[coffbeanie]

One of my biggest “what if” thoughts for miraculous ladybug is “what if the writers let Nathaniel be another love interest for Marinette even after Evillustrator?”

(I elaborate on this under the cut!!)

Just bc as someone who was in the fandom (and by that I mean I watched the show on YouTube and saw fanart via Pinterest and google images) like before season 2 but after season 1 ended, Nathaniel not only seemed to me like a well liked character, but there was also a good amount of fanart with him and Mari

I feel like he was kinda the go to for people who didn’t quite like him with Adrien (I always wondered why she didn’t just pick him-he seemed just as cute and as nice and he liked her back) and I also see him as that “Luka before Luka” as in he was another guy to ship Mari with, and they’re both kinda emo with the artsy vibe

I say this bc 1. I think it would have been interesting story wise and 2. As someone who was present when Nath as a fairly popular side character it’s sad to see him be neglected by the narrative

1. I’m not saying the writers should have scrapped Luka entirely and replaced him with Nath- obviously not Luka’s important to the story. I also understand that having too many love interests would have been difficult to tackle, but it would have been fun to see Nathaniel go “oh yeah I had a crush on you lmao kinda awkward it’s fine tho i’m trying to move on and I might be into ladybug now” and to them have Mari do a double take and be like “crap maybe I do like you a bit”

Also I think it would have provided interesting development for Mari to have Marc as a romantic rival-characters like Chloe, Lila, and Kagami (at least when she was first introduced) were all kinda put into a bad light, Chloe and Lila cause they were just mean and manipulative respectively, and Kagami cause she first came off as kinda mean and cold, giving Mari enough reason to dislike them and question whether they’re good for Adrien outside of also being jealous, but Marc wouldn’t be like that for Nath-he’s a quiet kid who seems nice enough, and he just writes fanfics, plays soccer, and doesn’t want to be bothered. If liked Nath enough, she would just have to accept that she’s feeling pure jealously cause you can’t really hate him for any other reason, also could have led to fun shenanigans to her trying to justify not liking Marc when she really can’t, she’s just mad cause he’s getting close to Nath

Also cause it would have been interesting to see Mari almost be rejected-maybe it’s just me but I could never really accept Kagami as a romantic rival cause they always portrayed Adrien as almost hesitant to get with Kagami, and his love for Ladybug would triumph over all(yeah they would do Chat getting over Ladybug for an episode it barely lasted) so I couldn’t see them actually being together and having the both of them be happy. Also Chloe and Lila weren’t fit for Adrien just cause they sucked

And for Luka he’s just like still there, and while he knows now that Mari and Adrien are made for each other before he had this “but I’ll still be here waiting for you if you need me :D” vibe

I think Mari being rejected by a character romantically if he was presented as a legit love interest would add more to that “just a normal girl with a normal life” cause we all don’t get what we want and people we like aren’t just going to stay waiting around for us-if Nath clicked with Marc more than he did with her than she would just have to deal with it, and seeing her deal with a still kinda hard (cause rejection is difficult) but realistic situation (something must of could relate to as it doesn’t relate to superhero-ing) would have been refreshing

2. I understand as I’m typing that I’m slightly biased towards Nath (were all the fanarts I saw as a kid really that popular? Or was I just being given Nathaniel centric art caused that’s what I looked up? I can’t remember honestly) but I’m still disappointed with how he was being pushed aside in the show, especially when-the character who would draw his superhero self insert at first denying a miraculous when presented one, and having to share his hero debut with three other people

(Penalteam could have worked if it was more Sabrina centric cause it’s hard to get out of a toxic friendship so yeah she would have gotten her miraculous last, because while getting away from Chloe definitely took her some time, ultimately she was still able to do it and become a hero, and what a better villain for her to fight than a whole bunch of Chloes; Ivan, Marc, and Nath should have gotten their own eps and I stand by this)

Idk as someone who got into the show bc of the Evillustrator episode, it’s just hard to see my fav boi be pushed to the side :((

If you read all the way to the end, thank you and pls share ur thoughts!!! Especially any Nathaniel fans wanna know if anything else has thought of this.

[kinkley-love]

so idk where this is going to go because i’m just trying to process the ending of the episode for myself when i should be sleeping

i can understand bobby dying from a narrative perspective. i’m looking forward to seeing how it affects the characters (but i swear if gerrard comes back AGAIN after how many complaints and mistreatment i will SCREAM)

but it also takes away a big part of why i like 911.

because 911 was the show where people go through it but they end up okay on the end.

because i could get through episodes and know people were going to be okay.

and when that’s taken away, it’s just another show that doesn’t pay to get invested in because why bother getting attached to the characters. (not saying i’m not invested or won’t be but like is it worth my energy and my emotions if it’s just gonna abruptly end things)

and like from a narrative perspective sure this shakes things up. but things already were shaken up. eddie’s gone. buck’s hanging on by a thread. chim’s dealing with new trauma both for himself and his family while preparing for another kid. hen is probably still recovering from denny almost dying and losing mara and all that came with that.

and you know what else would’ve shaken things up? bobby getting injured and not being able to be a firefighter anymore. let his recovery mean something. let him making a family and a loving home mean something. let the 118 figure out how to exist without him, not like they did in the first half of the season but when they know he’s not coming back to them. let him figure out who he is when he can’t be a firefighter anymore. which is what, from an extremely early age, he put his whole life towards.

i don’t know i’m just really over media using deaths like this as a finish to character arcs like life is a checklist and once you’ve checked the boxes you might as well be killed off.

i get that it’s a story and i guess trying to be realistic (9-1-1 and realistic? in the same sentence?) but see the neat things about stories is how they’re an escape from the disaster the real world is and this makes it not an escape anymore.

and like, if you were gonna kill bobby, honestly, do it last season. when he was suicidal and making amends and making sure to tell everyone how much they meant to him.

don’t do it now, when chimneys going to feel guilty about it forever. when hens last birthday with him will forever be the one he forgot (don’t even get me started). when athenas now just the “SO leaves her” character. when buck was, while helping, not there with his team and not able to do enough. and sure, these are all now storylines that can be explored. but you know, in early 911, there wasn’t constant higher and higher and higher stakes and honestly it was better. there was hijinks and family drama and learning about one another. which still needs to be done with how they’ve had so many of the characters regressing honestly.

give me more ridiculous calls. give me detective buck and bobby lore and chim&hen friendship and general FUN.

the story doesn’t need constant escalation. it needs more fun. i feel like we’re not allowed to just have any “good” episodes (in content, not in quality) anymore and that exhausts me *way* more than the fact it’s in its eighth season and until now didn’t have a major character death.

anyway. idk. this was all typed out on the fly and i’m not gonna be proofreading and who knows if i’ll change my mind in a week or two but just. after everything all these characters have been through this season alone, i really don’t think they needed to kill bobby to make it seem “real”

also tim if you’re worried about viewers not being excited / intrigued about your next huge catastrophe bc they feel confident no major character will die maybe you need to come up with something better. maybe focus more on rescues again. don’t always need to make it personal.

also also if one of these shows was gonna kill a captain why couldn’t it have been lone star owen was horrible

[tossertozier]

ao3 literally didn’t let me put my thoughts into my end notes at the end of my new chapter of rewriting it. i’ve been CENSORED i’ve been SILENCED i will SHARE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY!!! (it was just too long.)

i hate the sequences that occur after the restaurant in the movie. i’m not even going to get into why it’s stupid. the introduction of the artefact thing is when i went from “this isn’t going to be a very faithful characterization adaptation of a character gold-mine book” to “this is going to be a bad movie.” what in the goosebumps was that. do we also need to find the map to treasure island. i don’t feel like explaining why i feel like if you get it you get it.

i am stoned as hell there is so much i wanted to tackle in this it is insane. how to hold a mirror to the first chapter, as the book does, without directly or senselessly repeating it. i find the sequel bizarre in its choices. i really do. why do we spend SO long retconning the clubhouse. what the fuck are we doing. why are we doing this. the kids are adorable, and i understand the desire to shove em back in there. but i genuinely think it lacks confidence in the adult cast. a film that doesn’t trust its ability to win the audience over with just the story they have to tell is a narrative that hasn’t been well thought through. because genuinely. the entire sequence added absolutely nothing of narrative value. also. it’s a retcon. just didn’t happen, and i guess they regretted it?

also i love my sweet little guy ben but how the FUCK did he build that.

he didn’t, he just didn’t. even “reinforcing the walls” those walls are at least 6 ft tall. there’s… there’s just no fucking way… by himself?? if we were gonna do this why not be like… plausible about it and be like “oh yeah this is what we did Together after the events for the sake of ~healing~ energy and we still had plenty of people in town that don’t like us” that would have been fine? i guess bc bill moves away at the end of the movie. maybe they did it in like the three days they had till bill moved? i don’t know. it was dumb. all around.

also.i feel characterizations are off in this entire sequence. stan and the kids with the bonnets felt like an unnecessary attempt at being wholesome. forced? maybe? i really want to stress i think the kids acting abilities shined with the material given.

the inclusion of eddie breaking the toy? weird. out of character. wonder why it was included. wonder if they were looking to recreate that improv magic that made that first movie so special.

i, obviously was absolutely taken with the storytelling of chapter 1, and i wanted to know everything. i did as much research back in the day as i could on the topic. i was fascinated by that these sent those kids to camp. i hadn’t heard of something similar in a project in a while, and i thought it was genius. (obvious nod to child actor ethics, hope they were being observed, etc etc etc) but i went to camp as a kid. camp is fucking magical for friendships. i’ve tried and failed many many times to write camp based fics because like the friendships and the feelings and experiences you have when suddenly untethered from your home base is crazyyyy. i had some of my deepest feelings of trust during my friendships at camp… like to this day. genuinely

the young cast chemistry in the first film is insane and it is what makes that movie and it is heartbreaking to accept that it was… literally never coming back. even if you mimiced the process however long later. a lot had to have happened to, around, between those kids in that time elapsed. that’s going to change whatever dynamic they had before. that’s perfectly fine, but when you literally coattailed that script on JDG and FW’s backs (i still laugh at “suck the wound!! get in there!!” in my head sometimes) and let dialogue come naturally as a result of the experience and the environment… you should accept you cannot script its continuation. love love love the kids. still think giving them the scene like that was a mistake. it was time that should have been utilized to fall in love with the adult losers before we start scaring the shit out of them.

gonna say it… not a huge fan of the scripting of richie. we’ll get into it later. the book makes it a point to say that richie as an adult is not a cruel man. the apology moment is IN the book over a joke that surprises him. being in derry brings him back to a part of himself he’s deeply uncomfortable with. having his dialogue have a bit of a mean streak with zero exploration of it bums me out.

now to the second part of this: shitting on the book, which of course i do reference several times in this now literal fucking essay as of course… ultimately it’s the holy book. it is canon, to me. IT is the book. these movies are adaptations. i’m going to be real here: i respect stephen king as an author. though my jokes may suggest otherwise. etc. it is his story and that has to be commended. these are his characters and plot and original ideas and that’s a fact.

the second act of the book is a mess. in order to kill an entity, you have to explain what it is. that’s… that’s just da rulez. you cannot end existence without at least ?? rationalizing it ?? i suppose ?? to your audience.

i think that’s why king won’t touch this book with a ten foot pole. i’ve seen him show a lot more interest in projects around some of his other books. his general regard seems to be like “go nuts don’t ask me to write a script” because he knows. i don’t want to bring drugs and shame into all of this but like let’s be real… the book doesn’t really make sense when it comes to what pennywise actually is, and it doesn’t even really seem like he tries that .. hard to make sense. yes yes shapeshifter… get it. but he also makes balloons and shit appear from thin air. fact of the matter is he bends not only his own form but the reality around it.

and yes : i get it. i understand that if you’re a fan of stephen king, and you understand his universe, it all becomes less convoluted. i genuinely understand that.

but the task at hand is to write a horror movie for mass-appeal. i’m gonna take a crack at explaining what it is, why it’s so fucking powerful, and how it can be killed.

(honestly the ending of the movie, i know i know we’ll get there, but i was literally holding a hand to my mouth trying not to laugh. remember kids, if you’re ever being bullied, get more people than your bully and bully them.) we also didn’t do any of the metaphysical stuff in the first movie… so… sending bev to the deadlights instead of bill was interesting… obviously i think the interpretation of what she saw was weak as hell idk just see where i’m going with this. i’m trying to do a lot all at one time for no reason!

but really king created a BEAR of a villain to try and make sensible in two hours. i’ m gonna try

[jemmo]

rambles on that last twilight ending

my thoughts on the last twilight ending are so??? im gonna need to sit on this one for a while, bc i loved this show so whole-heartedly that i don’t want to write it off bc of a ‘bad ending’, but it also means it’s hard to reconcile that the ending was… well, i don’t think it was bad. i think it deserves more thought than that, but i don’t think it did what it wanted to, nor did it keep with what the shows message was, or should have been. and we can say it’s as simple as day shouldn’t have got his sight back, but I don’t think that was the only thing. if he stayed blind, the ending still wouldn’t have hit right for me. none of it hit right from the end of ep 11 bc it’s like I could feel the intent of the writing, but it’s not what the writing actually was. and if it was given maybe 3ish more episodes and all these characters were given more time, i think an ending like this could’ve worked. but again, it all comes down to that damn ep 11 curse that I thought p’aof was better than, bc you can’t squeeze everything that needed to be reconciled after this breakup and everything they wanted to do into one ep, not with this show.

i didn’t hate the idea of a breakup. if you’re going with the narrative of mohk having a fear of being away from day bc of his trauma and so on then fine, that works. and so it works that they had to be away from each other to grow in that way, but I do think it was unkind to mohk to send him away on that note. some understanding, and day wanting him to go for his own good would’ve felt kinder, and even if they were his real intentions, they didn’t communicate that either. it just felt like day had no empathy for him. and yes he was probably hurting too feeling like no one was trusting him, but whatever, it could’ve been done better. and if they wanted to play on anything else, then hey there was that whole bit with the car and day thinking mohk was looking after him just for the money, why not use that and the fact the opportunities mohk got in his career were connections bc he was with day. day could’ve been like well that was the whole point, you don’t work for me forever, you can do whatever you want now, or even just played more on him feeling like he’s holding mohk back. idk, i just mean if this breakup was going to turn out to be 3 years, no contact at all, which it did, it should’ve felt bigger than a 5 second argument.

anyway, then the finale comes and again, if they’d given more reason for a breakup, i would’ve understand more why day keeps on denying mohk a second chance, which i already don’t like the phrasing of bc it makes out like he did something wrong and needs to earn a second chance which he doesn’t. the whole thing would’ve been more understandable if this was day realizing that they both grew and found happiness in what they’re doing and he didn’t want to ruin that when the breakup meant it could happen. or they could’ve completely 180-ed and shown that one of them wasn’t happy, or both, idk mohk had no one in the states and was incredibly hurt and lonely, day was struggling after losing mohk like he did and reinforcing the idea that he couldn’t be independent made him retreat again. just anything would’ve given more strength behind a need to push away, and would have made it more satisfying when love overcomes it all blah blah blah.

and as much as i liked the airport scene and the fact day did go after him, do you know what would’ve been more impactful? day, knowing his full ability, and going against his mom who still worries for his safety or going bc of his mom seeing that he’s not truly happy, bc both could’ve worked given different writing, getting on a plane by himself and going after mohk, seeing him be able to traverse it all. for once we watch day by himself and unlike at the start of the show, we’re not constantly scared he’s gonna get hurt, bc he’s confident and able now and we can just watch him go after mohk and be excited about it, like the end to any other romance story. and it would’ve meant mohk got this moment where, after looking after day so much and getting broken up with bc he cared too much, he gets to see day caring for him that much too.

and the sight thing. yes, with the time they had they shouldn’t have done it, it should’ve been that they manage to find their own happiness despite it all, then the whole show would’ve been about day accepting his situation and standing up for his own ability and his own right to independence and happiness, and it would’ve meant mohk could overcome his fear of loss and guilt over his sister and learn that he isn’t to blame for anything, bc now day can make his own decisions and is ok on his own. now if there was more time, i could’ve seen it working, but only with stronger writing. I would’ve loved to have seen a conversation over day getting his sight back, maybe him not wanting it bc he’s accepted the way he is much like how some deaf people don’t want implants, and the opposing argument of how not all people in his place can have the possibility of seeing again. we could’ve seen fear in the opposite direction now that he’s used to his life, and that damn first scene of part 4, we could’ve seen him then wanting to go out into the world and look after people like him, just like mohk did for him, bc mohk made him see the importance of having someone there for you that cares for you and sees you as a person, as normal, not as your disability. and funnily enough, do you know what made me cry at the end of it? then showing the pictures that were taken when day was blind. that’s the kind of thing i wanted to see, and wished i did if they had more time. day getting his sight back but still showing how connected he is to who he was at that time and while not being thankful for it happening, being thankful for the way he’s grown, and loving the person he sees in those pictures. to go from someone who hid himself and his blindness to someone who shares his story and helps and advocates vocally for those like him, despite not being blind anymore. that way you still get to give day his sight back as your happily ever after but manage to retain the message.

so yeah. they missed the ball. but i also want to remove this idea that an ending ruins a whole show. at the end of the day, it’s one ep, and when a show has done so much good in all its other eps, at least in my eyes, that’s the stuff I’d rather talk about and remember.